


So Very Like a Grave

by All_the_damned_vampires



Series: Grave [1]
Category: CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Horror, Biphobia, Blood and Gore, Confinement, Dubious Consent, Exhibitionism, F/M, M/M, Manipulation, Mental Disintegration, Pandemics, Psychological Torture, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2015, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:53:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4150758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/All_the_damned_vampires/pseuds/All_the_damned_vampires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared is pretty sure he was insane even before he was abducted.  Not many people can survive a global pandemic with their minds intact.<br/>For a long time, it’s just Jared alone in the room, tended and manipulated by an unseen force.  </p><p>And then Jensen comes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Sudden, Clamorous Pain

**Author's Note:**

> All artwork for this piece done by the talented eprimacol. I am so grateful to her for bringing the story to life. 
> 
> Beta-ed by the incomparable dugindeep who demands BUTTS MOAR BUTTS and never gets what she deserves, poor lamb. 
> 
> All chapter titles come from the poem “A Pinch of Salt” by Robert Graves.

*-*-*-*

Slowly, Jared opens his eyes. His sticky lashes part to reveal a ceiling and four walls, hazy in his peripheral gaze.

This is not his room. This is not his bed. The sheets feel funny and his head hurts _and oh God, oh God, what--_

This is not his room.

Jared sits up and his head spins. He passes a hand over the sheets and they feel slick although they look like cotton. Anyway, they are white and his sheets are not white and his head hurts. He tries to stand up and falls onto the floor. It’s like lying on a sheet of paper. He heaves and then his vision goes black--

This is not his room.

Jared sits up. His head hurts and his neck hurts and he can’t be sure but he thinks he’s awoken here before. He has a flash of lying on the floor, vomit clinging to his lips in a hot, stringy mess, but that image quickly falls from his mind. He passes his hand over the sheets and they’re slick to the touch and it feels wrong, like a grocery store plastic bag. Tilting his head to look down at the fabric clenched between his hands hurts. The sheets don’t feel the way they look, like cotton sheets, anonymous issue from a mid-range hotel chain. His High School Mathalete group stayed at a Best Western on their way to Nationals and he remembers the bleached white sheets, coarse and cottony, against his bare back. It had been hot outside but the sheets in the hotel had been cool and bland. Hot. He is so hot now. Jared lets his eyes flutter shut.

When Jared wakes again he is sure this is not his room. This is not his apartment. The lights in his student apartment had been a mix of sad fixtures abandoned by prior students and cheap, junky lamps surrendered by his parents to the cause of higher education. The light had been poor and scattered in some rooms, overly bright and industrial in others. But this room— _not his room_ , his mind reminds—is lit with pale, diffuse light, the source unknown. Jared slowly turns his head to look around and his neck twinges. He’s sore there, sore on the left side of his neck, the muscle throbbing slightly. _Probably wrenched during a pick-up basketball game_ , Jared thinks, and then _there was no game, there’s nobody left to play, not for months_ and Jared buries that thought down deep and takes in the pale ceiling and pale walls of the room that is not his.

Jared sits up and his head spins for a moment, dizzy and sick, and he grips the sheets to steady himself. Again he can’t help but register how strange they feel under his hand, slick and plastic-y, which is weird because they look like plain old cotton sheets, nothing particularly fancy. Jared thinks he should push the call button, but that suddenly seems a ridiculous thought. This is no hospital room. The walls are smooth and blank, the light soothing and mild, and there is no sound of a monitor beeping or purposeful footsteps. There are no shouts or cries, no running feet, no alarms blaring. No blood on the walls, _blood on his hands, bodies stacked like wood along the halls, screaming, screaming, he is screaming--_

Jared shoves the memories away and takes a shuddering breath. There are no screams, no blood. The only sound here is his own hoarse, rapid breathing.

This is not a hospital room and this is not his apartment. Jared clings to these simple facts as he gingerly swings his legs around. The bed is high, high enough for Jared’s naked feet to dangle before he slides forward and rests them on the floor. The floor feels strange under his bare soles, like the coarse grain of construction paper, just waiting to be ripped up or cut up, but curiously sturdier under his toes than any paper would be. To Jared’s gaze, it looks like tile, and he shuts his eyes hurriedly to remove the skin-rippling sensation of seeing and feeling two different sensations at the same time. There’s no hurry to stand up and Jared lets himself slump to the side, feet coming back up to rest on the bed. No hurry at all.

This is not his room.

Jared wakes from his slumped position on the bed and he remembers. He’s been awake in this strange room before and he’s probably sick, but this is not a hospital. Everything looks different than it feels and that’s perhaps because he’s sick. His head hurts and his neck hurts and he’s very tired. Moving seems to be an effort and he’s lost time, perhaps, fading in and out of consciousness. Right now he’s thankful that so much of his attention is focused on his feeble body and making it do simple, mundane tasks. Sitting up and keeping his eyes open, and breathing in and out. If he stops to think about what has happened to him, happened to everyone and where he should be right now—

_Oh God, oh God, oh God, please please please—_

Jared wakes up. This time, he’s pretty positive he didn’t pass out or fall asleep. In his last panicked moments of consciousness, a misty haze had risen from the floor, blurring the walls and sending Jared’s eyelids into a flutter. There had been a chemical taste, drifting into his mouth to coat his tongue. Gas. Jared’s pretty sure it had been gas, as sure as he is of anything, which is to say not sure at all. But he had been having a panic attack and now he’s not. Now he’s calm, and if he just pushes those ugly, useless thoughts away, he can focus on the here and now. Focus on what his body needs to do and the room he inhabits. There’s nothing and no one else.

There is a door.

Jared sits up gingerly and he can see now that there is a door in the wall. It’s the same milky, bluish gray of the walls of the room and it’s closed. If he gets up, if he could get up, he could walk out the door. Maybe there would be someone on the other side.

_Nobody for months,_ his mind gibbers, _nobody, nobody and what might you find out there—_

Jared swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up. There’s a wave of dizziness and he almost topples over. The floor under his feet is soft and slightly rough, but he can ignore it like he can ignore the slick sheets and the light coming from nowhere and a gas inexplicably rising to calm his nerves and make him sleep. Somebody put him in this room and covered him in sheets and turned on the gas to calm him down and make him sleep. Someone is out there.

Someone is better than no one.

The door is as pale as the walls and there is no handle. For a moment, Jared wants to panic again, unsure if he can get out. Then his fingers brush the surface of the door and it swings away from his shaking hands a bit before swinging back closed. It’s open. He can push the door and it will open.

Jared reaches out and pushes the door open.


	2. When You Know The Dream Is True

There are three small rooms in Jared’s new home and Jared knows them all, has walked every inch of them. Heel to toe as he measures the area, reaches his long arms up and out to estimate ceiling height, and pushes at the boundaries of his cage.

It’s not a cage. It’s his home. If he calls it his home, then everything feels easier.

The first room is the bedroom and it’s where Jared first woke up. It’s where he always wakes up, even if he’s fallen asleep in a ball on the couch or slumped sobbing on the bathroom floor or on all fours anywhere, panicking and screaming, the gas rising from the floor to put him down gently. He wakes up in the bed, the sheets always smooth and smelling fresh, the same gray sweatpants and sweatshirt on his body, laundered clean and sweet. They no longer smell of his desperate sweat, of tears and snot and need. Jared knows that at some moment when he’s asleep, someone is coming in to carry him to bed and dress and undress him like a giant doll and it’s creepy as hell if you think about it long enough. Jared tries not to think about it.

This is his home. Not a cage, not a cell, not a prison or a zoo. It could easily be any one of those things, but he calls it his home. Jared imagines a captive panda or tiger might view his zoo enclosure the same way, if they were intelligent enough to think about it the way Jared does. And a dangerous animal never sees his captors.

Animal. Prisoner. Experiment. Pet. Better not to think of those words either, not to voice any suspicions. Jared is Jared, and this is his home, and it is better not to think too hard about any of this.

Jared’s home has three rooms and the second is a bathroom. It has a sink and a toilet and a shower with a separate tub, and everything looks pretty much the way a bathroom should and never does—clean, uncluttered, impersonal. Like a picture in an IKEA catalog. In his apartment, the bathroom was dingy and old, the sink cluttered with Jared’s aftershave and electric razor, toothbrush, and mouth wash. A jar of Adrianne’s hair clips teetering on the edge, too big to fit in the medicine cabinet. Long curly blond hair turning up everywhere, once even clinging to his toothbrush _and stop shedding like a cat, well then you put the seat down and maybe flush every once in a while, dammit I can’t even get in here most days and you don’t even need make-up, why did I even buy a squeegee if you’re not going to use it, Jared if you don’t clean that razor I swear to God--_

This bathroom is spotless. After all, someone else is coming in to wash Jared’s body and clean his teeth and hair, and he never sees them doing it. Just wakes up minty fresh in the bedroom, ready to start the day.

But he still goes through the motions. Routine is important. He gets up and urinates—and sometimes he doesn’t need to and how weird is that—and brushes his already clean teeth with water and a finger, and combs his shaggy, brown hair with his hands. Sometimes, he takes a leisurely shower and gets soap from the dispenser in the wall to wash a body that’s already been freshened. He then applies lotion from another dispenser to his skin, sometimes reddened and raw from the heat of the water. A long shower can eat up a lot of time.

He doesn’t take a bath. Not ever.

He puts the sweatpants and sweatshirt back on. It’s what he was wearing before he came to his new home, the last desperate days he can’t really remember clearly and doesn’t want to. He had been in a deserted Wal-Mart, skinny from malnutrition and shaky from dehydration and grief, scavenging for something clean to wear. Drawing on the pants and shirt is one of his last clear memories of that hazy time. It’s good that he has this last, fragile link to reality. These clothes are cottony and soft and feel real. So much of his prison feels wrong to the touch. He’s grateful for this small kindness.

The third room is his living room, and it has a couch and a round coffee table. On one wall is a kitchenette of sorts, cabinets and a refrigerator yet nothing he can use to prepare or cook food. One drawer of cutlery made from some sort of smooth lightweight stone, edges blunted and dull. No knives. There’s nothing here that Jared can use to truly hurt himself.

If he wanted to hurt himself. The jury’s still out on how Jared feels about that.

In the morning, a plate of food is waiting steaming and hot on the counter. Two more plates sit cold in the refrigerator, along with a jug of cool, flavorless water. Jared gets his hot meal in the morning— _if it even is morning_ , his mind argues, but it’s just one more thing to push away and not think about—and his two cold meals later. He tries to approximate lunch and dinner, but there’s no clock, no watch. Time means nothing. Sometimes, much later after the third meal, his rumbling stomach growls and Jared realizes he’s misjudged the intervals at which he should be eating. There’s nothing to be done for that either, other than to drink a lot of water and wait for the day to be over.

The only other thing in Jared’s living room is the window. It’s probably not a window, but when that thought creeps into Jared’s mind, the walls feel close and threatening. Thinking too hard about the window can cause Jared to gasp and pant in panic, and then the gas comes to calm him down and make him sleep.

It’s a window. A big, picture window, which lets in brightness. When Jared steps close, he can see a garden of sorts, flowers bright red and pink that never blow in the wind and never open and close with the light. No buzzing insects, no creeping squirrels. Over time the quality of the light from the window dims and lets Jared know when his “day” is over, but the sky stays blue. When Jared puts his hand up to touch the glass, it doesn’t feel like glass at all. There’s a harsh grit under his palm instead of smooth coolness.

It’s not a window. It’s a view screen or a matte painting, it’s fake as hell, and they’re probably watching, unless there’s nobody left. There is nobody left and everything is automated, and when the system runs down, then the food will run out.

_Oh God, oh God, oh God, please please please---_

Jared wakes up on the bed again.


	3. Like A Bird That Mocks

It’s too quiet here, alone and neglected, not a soul to be seen or heard. Jared bangs his head on the wall, over and over. Then the gas comes and he wakes up with only a light headache.

The skin on the inside of Jared’s wrist is tender and soft under his fingertips, yet it’s harder to bite through it than Jared had thought. It looks like velvety paper, like expensive stationary, wrapped around the tendons and bones that make up Jared’s lean arms. Jared bites savagely, then gags on blood, coppery and nauseating and leaking like ink around Jared’s sharp, square teeth.

He wakes up in the bed, the bite marks are already pink and healed over, erased mistakes.

Jared opens his mouth to scream and scream, but something inside forces him to muffle his cries with his hand instead. Who knows who or what is listening. His screams rise up again, but Jared shoves his fingers inside his mouth, forcing them deeper and deeper, jaw straining. Suddenly he’s choking on vomit, his hand wedged so deep that he can’t dislodge it. The gas comes as Jared’s heels are drumming on the floor.

He wakes up in bed. He always wakes up in bed. Clean and neat as if nothing ever happened.

Sometimes, he’s sore in strange places. Sometimes he’s sore in places he himself has injured. But everything heals quickly. Jared is well cared for.

He can’t kill himself. He can’t escape. But Jared can’t seem to stop trying to do either.

Several uncountable weeks into his stay— _imprisonment—_ at his new home— _cage_ —Jared decides it must be aliens. He has several very good reasons for this line of thinking and he’s rather proud of his analysis.

Jared isn’t at his old apartment home. There, his sheets are plaid and his apartment is never clean. Also, his apartment has a door to the outside and he can leave.

He isn’t in a hospital. Here, it’s sterile and bright and quiet. Nobody’s screaming as doctors and nurses topple to the floor right in front of his eyes. He isn’t standing amid the wave of death, weighed down with a body in his arms, long curly hair spilling toward the floor, white face rigid and limbs stiff in his grip.

It isn’t his parents’ house. They weren’t answering the phone. Maybe they were just busy.

It isn’t Chad’s place. The bath tub is clean and empty here, but Jared still isn’t getting in it.

It isn’t the university, rows of empty chairs and abandoned belongings stashed under desks and in hallways. School’s out forever.

Jared is sure that narrows his choices to laboratory, prison, or alien enclosure. If he was in a lab, Jared reasons, there would be people in white coats, coming in to take his blood and put him through a series of tests. Maybe they would tell him more about what’s going on in the outside world, or maybe they would be evasive and coy. But they’d want to know: _Why are you alive? How did you survive?_

Perhaps the salvation is hiding in Jared’s body, although he doubts it. He may have missed the first wave of illness, but it took him down eventually. All it needed was time. He was gasping on the floor just like anybody else in those final days, choking on blood like a beached fish. There was blood down his shirt and all over the floor and on his hands. Dying.

But in a laboratory, there would be people talking, endless questions and endless tests. There’s nobody here. If they _are_ here, observing from somewhere beyond Jared’s rooms, they don’t want Jared to see them.

Jared’s unsure if he’s guilty or not, but this isn’t a prison either. Everything here is designed to be reassuring and falsely comforting, and Jared’s seen enough movies to know those are two things prison never is. There are no other prisoners trying to make Jared drop the soap—no bars of soap here anyway—or rough-faced guards slapping their batons against their meaty palms. No lawyer ever enters to ask Jared: _Why didn’t you save them? How could you live when they are dead?_ No one screaming that it’s his entire fault, he should have checked on Chad sooner. A greenish, black thing in the bath tub, a thing that used to be a person.

Nobody’s screaming at him, but Jared still feels guilty as hell.

This isn’t hell, either. It is climate controlled.

This isn’t his apartment, Adrianne on the couch in just one of his huge t-shirts, silky smooth knees peeking up from behind a textbook. Plant a kiss on the inside of her thigh, supple and pink and not yet white and stiff and cold.

So it’s aliens. It has to be.

The first indication is the way everything feels. If something looks like wood, it will feel like metal. Something that looks smooth will feel rough. Jared can only guess that the aliens are trying to approximate human materials for this habitat, and texture is a flaw in the illusion.

Better to call it a habitat than a cage. Better to assume Jared is being held for some gentle purpose, healed and succored, than something more sinister.

The second indication is that all his food tastes funny. Or rather, tastes like nothing. Appearance-wise, it all looks fine. There is a brownish-pink slab for meat, a pile of fluffy white for potatoes. Yet nothing tastes the way it looks. Almost everything tastes a bit like old lettuce, wilted and bland.

Of course, everything might taste and feel funny because Jared no longer trusts his senses. They’ve been damaged by the illness or his mind has been broken by— _don’t think about it just don’t think please please_ —and he isn’t feeling what he thinks he’s feeling, or tasting what he thinks he’s tasting.

His tears taste real, salty and desperate. His sweatshirt feels real when he twists it in his sweaty grasp. The thin flesh on the inside of his wrist is smooth and real against the pressure of his gnawing mouth. These things are real among all the other approximations he’s surrounded by.

Jared isn’t broken. Jared is still Jared.

The third clue that suggests aliens are the force behind all this is that Jared is alone. He wonders what the aliens look like, his mind cycling through Hollywood versions, everything from Star Wars to Star Trek. Green skinned belly dancers and humanoids with goldfish heads and medieval looking pigs. Maybe they’re hideous. Maybe that’s why no creature ever comes, although Jared swears he can feel eyes watching him.

He could laugh. He’s pretty sure Jabba the Hutt could come waddling into the room and Jared would embrace that giant slug like a long lost brother, just for the sake of company.

Jared tries not to think about his brother.

Of course, there are flaws to Jared’s theory. If this is Jared’s human habitat, in a zoo on some spaceship or on a distant planet, the aliens haven’t planned well for Jared’s future. No attempt to address what little remains of Jared’s mental health. There’s virtually no stimulation. No books, no television. No rolling plastic ball filled with snacks, the kind you leave a dog to amuse itself on a lonely afternoon. Jared does basic calisthenics on the floor of his living room, push-ups and sit-ups and jumping jacks, now that he’s feeling steadier. Sometimes Jared thinks about stressed exotic birds pulling out their own feathers, and has to take his hands away from his own brown hair, a few strands lying loose along his palms. He thinks about a hyena he saw in a zoo once that was wearing a path in the dirt, pacing and pacing. He thinks about this as he endlessly measures the dimensions of his own habitat.

Of course, this may not be an alien enclosure at all. If so, then this leaves two options.

The first option is that he’s insane. None of this is real and Jared is—somewhere else. Maybe locked inside his own mind. The thought is not as terrifying as it should be.

But he isn’t insane. He isn’t broken. Jared is still Jared.

It’s the only thing he knows to be real.

The second option is that he’s been put here to be tortured.

There’s a strange sound echoing around the small room, and Jared realizes it is muted whenever he closes his lips. It’s the whining of a frightened animal and it seems to issue from his own throat. He finds himself making this sound sometimes and he usually can stop it, especially if he’s not ready to sleep yet.

So. Torture. Jared’s alone, and he will remain alone until he tears his hair out and wears his feet bloody or just stops eating, here in this quiet, lonely space where it’s just him and his own mind. A mind filled with all the things he doesn’t want to remember.

There’s that sound again.

Jared stands up and paces. His fingernails are kept neat and short here, but he’s unsurprised to see his own hands raking red lines down his arms. Stripe after stripe after stripe. Jared’s transforming himself into a red and white zebra.

The room starts to become hazy and chemical-tinged and Jared gratefully folds his long body onto the carpet. This makes the gas work quicker. The last time he fell from a standing position, he hit his head on the rubbery coffee table.

It can’t be torture. Not if the aliens are kind enough to make Jared sleep whenever it becomes too much.


	4. The Delicate Thing You Prize So Much

Jared’s not sure how long it’s been, but he’s not getting out of bed. Not today. Maybe he won’t get up ever.

He seemingly woke up hours ago--- _who knows_ , his mind whispers unhelpfully, _who knows_ —but he doesn’t feel like getting up. Out in the living room, his breakfast is going cold and unpalatable. It’s fine with Jared. Let them send in Jabba the alien zoo keeper if they want to force-feed him.

He’s come up with another flaw in the aliens’ plan. If they want to conserve the human race, they’ve made a big mistake.

Lack of a breeding partner.

Jared rolls over lazily on his back. He looks down and sees his erection tenting the front of his sweats. That’s a good sign, he guesses. Perhaps it means he’s not sick any more, no longer dying. That he’s recovering physically, even as his mind deteriorates in this dull, silent space.

Jared reaches down and takes himself in hand. There might be aliens watching, but this is probably a big selling point: watch the human engage in sexual behavior. Like lions mating in the zoo. Or a chimpanzee jerking off, oblivious to the camera flashes.

And Jared always did like to be watched.

He begins to stroke himself, slowly. He’s propped up enough to watch his own dick glide in and out of his fist, the tip ruddy and wet, shaft thick and hard in his palm. It’s pretty.

This isn’t his apartment because back in his apartment Jared would jerk off often. He would do it lying on the couch or on the bed or sometimes in the shower. If Adrianne caught him doing it—and “caught” is a pretty inaccurate word for Jared jerking it openly on the couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon—she might smack his thigh on the way past. She might pause and watch him, eyes darkening with desire. Or she might bat his hand aside and climb on, pussy warm and wet and just as good to look at, his cock disappearing and reappearing inside the warmth of her, slick and glistening at her opening.

Jared pulls one of the pillows over his heated face. He wants to see her better.

_“You have a problem, you know that right?” Adrianne laughs from the bedroom doorway and Jared pushes his laptop away so he can drink in the sight of her. Light, flippy, little sundress and he can almost see right through it. A million times better than the porn on his computer. His beautiful, real girl._

_“You like it,” Jared counters. He’s boldly naked on the bed—it’s warm enough for it—and he likes the way his girl’s eyes drift over his body, how just her eyes tracking up the length of his long, spread legs makes his stomach muscles tremble. Adrianne is shifting in the doorway, her thighs brushing against each other, nipples visible through her bra and the thin, gauzy fabric of her dress. Jared moves his hand faster._

_“You could have waited for me,” she says playfully, tongue darting out, soft mouth wet and smiling._

_“Sorry. I’m sorry. But I’m almost… almost there,” Jared gasps._

_“Come for me, baby,” Adrianne demands and Jared does. Wet, warm splash on his quivering belly._

_Jared blinks his eyes open and watches Adrianne shimmy out of her panties and hang them on the bedpost. She knee-walks up onto the bed, hitching up her little skirt. A moment later and she’s crouching over his face, her pussy becoming his whole world. It’s a warm day and there’s sweat gathering on her thighs, pussy wet and pungent and covering his mouth._

_“Lick me,” Adrianne says, somewhere far above him, a goddess giving an order to her subject, and Jared uncurls his tongue._

Dry, slick, plastic-y taste. Jared opens his eyes to the shadowy, slippery fabric of the pillow covering his face. His belly is cold and wet from his own release and there’s no beautiful girl hovering above him. The beautiful girl is six feet under.

Jared screams. He tears at the pillow and screams, sweat pants still pushed down around his thighs. He screams and screams until his throat aches. For some reason, there’s no gas to calm him this time, just Jared alone in an empty room, alone like he was and like he will apparently forever be.

Is this how a captive white rhino feels, Jared wonders; does an animal heading for extinction still howl for a mate?

“Please,” he whispers, voice raspy and distressed, hoarse from weeks of disuse. “Please. I’m alone. I don’t want to be alone. Please.”

He’s never called out before. He’s never asked for anything before. Jared realizes it’s because he’s been afraid of who—what—might come. Afraid of what he might learn. He’s afraid to find out if there is even anyone there at all.

But the loneliness is worse than the fear.

“Please,” Jared says again, desperately. “I need someone. Please.”

There’s no answer and after a while, Jared wipes the wetness from his face on the sheets. He dries his sticky belly and pulls his pants up. It’s utterly quiet except for Jared’s sobbing breaths and his fingers scrabbling desperately on the sheets.

He’s been alone before, out in the dying world, but this is different. There’s no search for other survivors in this sterile cage. No impossibly long trek towards a home that may or may not be there. No one comes and Jared cannot leave.

No reason to get up. No reason to eat. No reason for anything.

This is easier. It’s much easier now. Jared doesn’t get up from his bed and he lets his mind drift, back to better days. Not the months before his illness, not the things he lost in the chaos following the epidemic, before he became sick, too. Not the desperate daily scramble to survive, a slow crawl towards oblivion.

Better things. His favorite classes and family vacations and Adrianne snug in bed next to him, his hand on her breast. Sometimes he touches himself, but mostly he just curls inward and floats among his memories. The pillow in his arms makes a comforting weight, although sometimes it’s a mocking imitation, not a warm, soft body. Jared pulls it close or shoves it away, depending on his mood.

Sometimes, he wakes up and his forearm throbs dully or his throat feels raw, and he wonders if they’re feeding him while he sleeps. Maybe they are feeding him through a tube. It doesn’t really matter. He’s alone except when he’s not alone in his head. Memories are easier than reality that doesn’t even feel real anyway. Jared is content to drift in the voices of the past.

It’s much easier now.


	5. And Lovely With No Flaw or Strain

The room is not his room. It’s his habitat, his cage. Maybe his tomb. Jared wakes and sits up slowly, the first time in a long time. There’s an energy running through his body, and the despair seems quieter, muted.

Jared sighs resignedly. If they can pump in gas to make him calm and to make him sleep, they can probably give him something to deal with his depression and grief, his paranoia and fear.

He’s also hungry.

“Some Cheetos would be nice,” Jared mutters as he stands up. His muscles feel a bit weak; he’s back to the wobbly foal stage of his first days in his habitat. Building up that strength again feels pointless, but the jittery need to _move_ thrumming in his veins can’t be denied.

As Jared reaches for the door there’s a thump and a gasp from the living room and Jared freezes.

There’s someone—or something—in his living area.

Jared’s next thought is that there’s no way to barricade the door. It swings out, not in, and there’s no handle. Whatever is out there, it can get in, and it can get him. Jared starts to pant.

“Hello?” The new voice is low and gruff. It sounds human.

Trembling, Jared swings open the door and steps out of the bedroom.

There’s a man standing in his living area. He’s tall and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, his feet as bare as Jared’s own. His face is turned to the side as he looks at Jared’s meager abode, and Jared hungrily drinks in the sight of the man’s profile, strong and alive and wonderful.

And definitely not like Jabba the Hutt.

Jared’s feet rasp on the floor a bit as he stumbles a step closer, and the man turns and looks at him. The stranger is young and eerily handsome, golden hair and green, green eyes. His face is curious only. No apparent malice or fear.

“Hello?” the man says again and Jared launches himself at him.

In his old life, Jared thinks, as he collides with this stranger, this type of behavior would result in a brawl. You don’t just grab some guy. But Jared has already lifted the man off his feet and into his own arms, his hug impossibly tight. The man gasps a bit at the impact, but doesn’t raise his fists, allowing Jared to manhandle him.

“I’m sorry,” Jared mutters helplessly as he hands roam over every inch of the stranger’s flesh. He palms the man’s head in his hands, strokes his fingers down the sandpaper rasp of the stranger’s lean cheeks. His fingers roam up and under the man’s plain black t-shirt, Jared’s big hands braceleting the man’s biceps and sliding up and down his arms, fingers tugging at the shirt’s neck so Jared can caress a collarbone. “I’m sorry.”

The man moves as if to lift his arms, then lets them drop, his whole body relaxed, or resigned.

“It’s okay,” he says, unresisting in Jared’s grip. “I understand.”

And Jared sobs and continues to pull and pet and touch every inch of the stranger’s flesh. Once he has catalogued so much of the man, the swell of his muscles and the lightly tanned, freckled skin revealed under his shirt, Jared collapses down on his knees, the stranger still held tight in his arms, and buries his wet face against the man’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” Jared gasps again, crying. “But thank you, oh God, thank you.”

There is a strange man in Jared’s habitat and he’s sitting on Jared’s couch. The space feels even smaller with this person in it. He’s a tall man just as Jared is a tall man, just a few inches shorter than Jared, but with sturdy shoulders of his own. Jared wants to fling open a door or a window to give them more space, but that isn’t an option, and Jared suddenly has the terrifying thought that if he could, he would simply look out onto black nothingness; this little series of rooms is all that’s left in the universe.

Jared crouches down and rocks and rocks.

There’s a smear of gold and tan in Jared’s vision and he looks up through blurry, tear-filled eyes to see the stranger crouching down beside him, one gentle hand on Jared’s shuddering shoulder.

“Please be real,” Jared begs anxiously, and the stranger’s mouth quirks. He draws Jared into his embrace, back to chest, and let’s Jared shudder and gasp for long moments. Emotions buffer and smash, but this man is an anchor, grounding Jared and sheltering him, keeping him together.

“Better?” the man asks after a while, and Jared nods. He lets the stranger draw him up and onto the couch, sitting side by side, like a prom date and her awkward boyfriend, waiting for the parents to come down and give them both a stern talking-to before the big night.

“Who are you? Where did you come from?” Jared asks. Because there had been nobody. Jared had looked. There had been things on the street and in the looted, burned out stores and in the bath tub— _oh, God_ —things that used to be people, bloated and soft and melting slowly into the ground. It was Jared’s fault because he was alive and they were not.

“My name is Jensen,” the man says, then shrugs a bit ruefully. “As for the rest I’m not sure. I don’t really remember.”

“You don’t remember what?”

“I don’t remember anything. I woke up in a place similar to this one, alone. No one answered my calls. No one came.”

“Yes,” Jared whispers.

“I started to feel really messed up. The silence was getting to me. I went to sleep one night and the next thing I know, I’m waking up here.”

“I want to eat,” Jared says abruptly and jerks to a standing position, stalking over to the kitchenette. He doesn’t know what this means. When Jensen talks it feels real, maybe it’s not something Jared has created in his mind. Most of what Jared has been conjuring up has been memories, and Jensen is something new. Logically, he can understand that the world is a big place and the plague had spread everywhere and there could have been other survivors. _Survivors._ Jared snorts a bit at the word. He wasn’t a survivor, he was just stubborn. Worn down by hunger and dehydration, by lack of sanitation and by grief, his body just took longer to succumb than the others who had died in the first wave of the plague.

Jared places his hand on the refrigerator door and then freezes. He suddenly doesn’t want to see what’s inside. It’s usually two cold plates but there should now be four cold plates because there’s a new animal—Jensen—in the habitat, but what if there isn’t? What if there isn’t any food? It might be because Jared stopped eating and maybe they forgot to stock the fridge or stopped stocking it for the duration. Maybe they forgot or stopped, but what if he opens it and there are only two plates?

Animals in the wild compete for resources, but animals in captivity shouldn’t and Jared isn’t an animal and neither is Jensen, but what if they’re supposed to fight for it, what if it’s a fight to the death? Jensen’s clean, compassionate hands snapping Jared’s neck, Jared smashing Jensen’s understanding face into the wall over and over. The alpha gets to eat and the other dies quick and bloody or dies slow and starving and why are they doing this to him, _why_?

“Hey, are you okay?” Jensen is talking to him but there’s that high whine drowning everything out and all Jared can see is Jensen’s face: clear eyes narrowed in cautious concern, the movement of his full lips as he forms words of reassurance. “Breathe, just breathe.   Try to calm down.”

Or instead of fighting him, Jared can submit to Jensen. Maybe that will be acceptable. Jared will bare his throat or offer his belly and maybe, maybe Jensen won’t kill him. Jensen will be the alpha and that’s fine just fine, as long as there is no more death. It is fine as long as the walls aren’t sprayed red with blood.

“Don’t hurt me,” Jared gasps between shuddering breaths.

Jensen reaches out and Jared flinches, then Jensen is pulling him back into that same embrace, Jared’s sweat-damp back against Jensen’s strong chest, grounding and centering and leaching away the fear. Jensen hasn’t made a move to either harm Jared or defend himself and maybe it would have been better if Jensen had led with violence, a hand on the back of Jared’s neck, grinding his face into the floor. _Paper cuts_ , Jared’s mind babbles, paper cuts on his cheek because the floor is a sheet of paper and if Jensen pushes hard enough maybe Jared will just tear the page and fall straight through.

Jared goes away for a while.

When he wakes up, he’s reclining on the couch and Jensen is sitting on the floor by his head, staring off at the big picture window that isn’t a window at all. Jared shifts a bit, his muscles stiff and weak from disuse and also the tension and strain of fear and panic. At the movement, Jensen turns around and looks at him, offers up a hesitant smile.

“You okay now?”

_No_ , Jared thinks _, I’m not okay and I probably never will be_. He shrugs.

“Want to try to eat now?” Jensen asks and then he’s offering up a plate of food from the coffee table. He has a laden fork in hand and lifts it to Jared’s lips. Without thinking, Jared opens his mouth and accepts the bite of bland, filling food.

“Better?”

Jared swallows. “Yes.”

Jared’s hands are free and they twitch as he thinks about reaching for the plate, but Jensen is already raising the fork to Jared’s mouth again and it’s simpler to just let this stranger feed him. Jensen claimed the food but he’s sharing it with Jared, so that’s okay. Jared’s already decided that as long as Jensen wants to be the boss, he can be the boss. There’s not going to be some lame struggle for dominance just so the aliens can write in their field journals or whatever they’re doing out of sight.

“What’s your name?” Jensen asks.

Jared tries to speak around the mouthful of food, smiles, and then swallows as much as he can before saying, “Jared. And you must have been a waiter.”

Jensen frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“You said you don’t remember anything, but maybe you used to be waiter,” Jared says and he’s almost giggling it strikes him as so suddenly funny. “Because a waiter always waits until your mouth is full to ask a question…”

Jensen is looking at him like he’s nuts.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jared says hurriedly. “You don’t remember having a job?”

“No,” Jensen says shortly, but he’s offering up more food, and Jared shuts up and eats.

It’s strange, to be cared for in this manner, like a small child. To be cared for at all, honestly, by a living, breathing person, instead of an impersonal, anonymous force. Jensen’s forkfuls of food are just the right size. He spoons them into Jared’s mouth carefully and waits for Jared to indicate he’s ready for another mouthful, eyes intent on Jared’s lips. Jared can’t remember the last time someone fed him thusly.

Then Jared remembers.

_It was Adrianne and it was his birthday, the first year they were officially together. Months of dancing around the issue, Adrianne’s toothbrush in the bathroom and one drawer cleared out in Jared’s dresser, but both of them too shy or too proud or too stupid to say the words._

_One of her silk scarves around his eyes, those airy, perfumed garments she collected piles of yet never seemed to wear. Claimed she was never very good at accessorizing and it was true, but Jared had loved how her throat and ears were always bare, a playground for his lips and tongue and teeth. She loved to use her scarves on Jared’s eyes and Jared’s wrists and ankles, and in his mind, he remembers that all he can see is rosy gauze pressed against his slitted eyes. Adrianne’s soft hand is on his cheek and the cool, metal tines are sliding in and out of his mouth, coated with chocolate cake, flavor melting along his palate. Adrianne straddles one of Jared’s bare thighs, pressed naked and warm and wet against his skin, and she rocks back and forth as she twists to scoop up cake from the plate and press it into Jared’s mouth._

Jared opens his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d shut them. Jensen is waiting, offering a bite, slight smile on his face. Their eyes meet and Jared wants to blush. There’s a stirring in Jared’s groin and he’s embarrassed.

“Is it good?” Jensen asks, eyes innocent, and Jared’s mind reels as he searches for a distraction.

“No,” Jared says. “It doesn’t taste right.”

Jensen frowns and slips the fork between his own lips.

“It’s like eating a picture of food,” Jared explains.

Jensen chews thoughtfully, and then nods.

“I think the aliens don’t know what they’re doing,” Jared says. “I mean, when it comes to making the food. They should have a replicator. Like on Star Trek.”

“Aliens?” Jensen asks, one eyebrow cocked in disbelief.

“I think it’s aliens,” Jared babbles on. He can see Jensen’s eyes growing bigger and bigger, but he just can’t help himself. All these weeks—months? years?—he has been thinking and thinking, ideas swirling in his confused mind, and it feels good to just lay it all out for another person to hear. “It’s probably aliens. I mean, it could be elves or something but that doesn’t make sense because they didn’t give either of us shoes. And elves make shoes, right?”

“Aliens,” Jensen murmurs quietly.

“I mean, or we’re dead or insane or something, but I think it is aliens. I think they made a little human zoo because we were all dying and this is probably some attempt at conservation, like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, only it’s aliens. We’re like dodo birds or panda bears or something.”

Jensen stares at Jared without saying anything. The silence grows and Jared is compelled to fill it, the way he always has his whole life, talking and talking until the victim of his benign verbal attack is smiling and laughing and then Jared knows he’s won that person over. Jared has always been able to make friends on chattiness and charm alone.

But Jensen looks troubled, and it must be because the words are all coming out wrong, disjointed and disturbing. Jared doesn’t know how to do it anymore, how to soothe and disarm with his voice. Is it that he’s spent too much time alone? Or perhaps it is because too much has happened. And Jared isn’t who he was, not anymore.

No. Jared is still Jared. It’s the only thing he can be sure of.

Jensen stands abruptly and puts the plate of food away, only half eaten. But that’s fine. He’s willing to feed Jared so there’s no fight for resources, not here in Jared’s home. Maybe Jensen’s home now, too. Jensen turns away and Jared admires him; it’s almost impossible not to. The smooth curve of his back under the dark t-shirt, the broad shoulders that are hitching slightly for some reason unknown. Jared’s always been long-limbed, stretched out on his bones and towering over everyone around him, his features not clownish but a bit exaggerated nonetheless. Pointy nose and broad forehead and strong jaw, all balanced on a delicate, swan-like neck.   He knows he’s good looking, and if he hadn’t been then his natural charm would have been enough. Enough to make friends and lovers. But to look like Jensen, every feature in perfect proportion, almost unreal?

What did Jensen do previously? Movie star? Supermodel? Jared’s sure he would have remembered if he’d seen Jensen before, maybe in one of those glossy magazines Adrianne occasionally brought home. When Chad came over, he would devour them, too, although he pretended he was doing it mockingly, not fooling anyone in the way his small eyes would track avidly over the page. The allure of the popular and the pretty. A slick, shiny page as close as one could come to a touch.

“So what do you want to do now?” Jared says softly, partly to himself. Jensen turns around, face smooth and remote. If he’s feeling even half the turmoil Jared has felt, he’s not showing it.

“I mean, that’s a stupid question. There really isn’t anything to do here. Not a book or a game to be found. It’s zoo ‘old school’, you know, small habitats and concrete floors, nothing to stimulate the mind. Did you have anything in your habitat? Deck of cards? Anything fun?”

“No,” Jensen says, frowning again.

“I mean, we could probably make cards from toilet tissue squares, but they would all be blank because we don’t have any way to mark them, but that actually might work because then I could always have an ace when I needed it…are you okay?”

Jensen is tapping his forefinger against his cheek in an agitated manner. “What?”

There is gas rising from the floor, blurring the walls and setting a metallic tang on the roof of Jared’s mouth. Jared tries to stand, tries to grab Jensen’s hand, but he crumples off the couch and onto the floor. His eyes flutter shut.

Jared wakes up in his bed.

Jensen is gone.

Jared goes through the three rooms, over and over. There’s no way he could possibly miss another person, not in such a small space, but he goes through each room again and again. Bedroom, bathroom, living room. Bedroom, bathroom, living room. Jensen must be just one step ahead of him, just in the other room, although that’s not really possible. But Jared can’t help but hope. Bedroom, bathroom, living room. Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

After a while his naked feet feel a bit raw. Jared thinks of the hyena in the zoo, pacing and pacing, dirt worn down in a deep, sad trough. Was that hyena looking for someone, too? Just around the bend, in a circular enclosure that had no beginning or end, like a wedding ring.

After a while, fatigue wins. Jared is one day out from a long period of inactivity and despair, and his weakened body can’t keep up the relentless movement much longer. He retreats to the couch. It’s the last place he saw Jensen.

He’ll keep looking. Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

He’ll try again tomorrow.


	6. Mask Your Hunger

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Jared’s legs tremble, and he has to take frequent breaks.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Sometimes, he stops and presses an ear to the wall. And then the next wall. And the next. Maybe their cells are side by side. Maybe they’ve been living tandem all this time, just inches away from each other. But Jared can’t hear anything.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Jared sucks in a deep breath, puts his lips to the wall, and wails. Can Jensen hear him? Is he screaming back? Maybe the walls are soundproofed.

Maybe Jensen was never here at all.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Just out of sight, just in the next room. He has to be. _He has to be._

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

His feet hurt and his legs burn, and he has to admit defeat. Jared collapses on the bed. He hasn’t eaten, but he isn’t hungry, not for food anyway.

He’ll try again tomorrow.

This room is now his room. Jared opens his eyes and then smiles.

“Hi.”

Jensen smiles back. They are lying side by side on Jared’s bed. Jensen is back. _He’s back_.

Or is he?

Jared reaches out, thumb and forefinger, and squeezes down hard on the smooth, freckled skin of Jensen’s arm.

“Ow!”

“You’re real,” Jared breathes. He is as real as Jared is at least. He is more real than anything else in this place.

“What did you do that for?” Jensen complains, looking at Jared warily. He’s sitting up, rubbing his arm. He looks like he wants to try and run away, which is silly. There’s nowhere to go.

“I’m sorry I pinched you,” Jared says, contritely. “Will you come lay back down?”

Jared has twisted and turned a bit on the bed, enough to be on his side, facing Jensen like a flower faces the sun. But honestly, he’s feeling more like a bedraggled weed. He’s wiggled enough to know that his stomach is hollow and aching, his limbs sore from relentless pacing, throat scratchy from screaming. He doesn’t want to uproot himself to get up. He might not be able to.

“Ok,” Jensen says. He’s in that same t-shirt and jeans, but he curls uncomplaining on his side, facing Jared.

“Can I touch you?” Jared asks.

Jensen frowns. “You aren’t going to hurt me again, are you?”

“No,” Jared says softly. “I missed you. I’m sorry.”

“Ok.”

Jared reaches out, hesitates, and then glides a finger over the slope of Jensen’s nose. Soft, warm, perfect skin. Alive. Jensen’s eyes close, shuttered by long, golden lashes, and Jared stokes the feathery hairs before moving up to trace Jensen’s eyebrows. Jensen’s hand rests on his own cheek, fingers trembling a little, and Jared pets a gliding line down each digit, before moving down to trace Jensen’s chin.

Jensen is not a doll, Jared thinks suddenly, a little ashamed of himself. Jared needs this so much, this contact. How weird is it that Jensen just gives it to him, lets him trace designs on his face, when they only met just yesterday?

“I’m sorry,” Jared says, reluctantly pulling his hand away. “My mama always said I had no concept of personal space. I just needed, needed to touch. Someone. I’m sorry.”

Jensen’s eyes open slowly and he smiles. Jensen’s smiles are small, so grudgingly given, Jared thinks.

“Maybe I needed the touch, too,” Jensen breathes softly and the words make it all okay.

“Where did you go?” Jared asks.

“Don’t remember,” Jensen says, his perpetual frown back in place, his world strange and not making sense, but more a nuisance than a terror.

“Nothing? You don’t remember anything?” And this is suddenly terrifying to Jared. To blink out of existence like that, here and gone as quick as one can close and open one’s eyes. Can Jared disappear that way?

“Hey. Breathe. Calm down. I’m fine.” Jensen shifts uncomfortably. “Are you hungry?”

Jared nods, his breath hissing in and out between his teeth. He fumbles for calm.

“Let me get you something. Just stay here.” And Jared reaches for him, long fingers clawing and grasping. What if Jensen goes in the other room and they have to play that same game; Jared stalking around and around his habitat, and Jensen always one step ahead and out of reach?

“Jared,” Jensen says calmly, grabbing Jared’s hand and extricating it from his clothes. “I’m right here. I won’t go away. I can’t really promise you that, I know. But I’m promising anyway. I’ll come back. I’ll always come back. I promise.”

A promise. Well, okay then. Just like the news agencies and the government had promised that the flu would be over in a few weeks—and it had been over, but not the way they meant. Just the same as Jared promising Chad he would always be there for him, promising Adrianne that she would be okay. Promises. Lies. They were both the same thing.

Jared lays back and lets Jensen walk from the bedroom, door swinging shut behind him. If Jensen broke his promise and didn’t come back, then Jared would promise to look for him. It was all he could do.

He was back in moments, with a plate of food. There is steam rising into the air, so it is the hot plate and, therefore, it is morning.

“Can you sit up a little?” Jensen asks and Jared realizes that Jensen means to feed him again. Jared is chatty and grabby, and has few personal boundaries, but maybe Jensen is just as strange.

“Will you make the airplane noises?” Jared asks and Jensen’s face falls into its ever present frown.

“What are you talking about?” Jensen asks and Jared giggles.

Jensen may be a blank slate, tabula rasa, but maybe they weren’t able to strip away his core personality, this grumpy nurturing that Jensen does so effortlessly.

Jared will eat and if he drifts off to sleep again, Jensen will be there. Maybe he won’t be there right away. Maybe he’ll be gone for a while. But Jensen will come back.

After all, he promised.


	7. Flirting The Feathers Of His Tail

_“Hey, baby,” Adrianne says absently as Jared comes through the door. “You’re early.”_

_She’s curled up on the couch, nose shiny and red, used tissues littering the ground around her in disgusting, wet lumps. She coughs weakly and snuggles a bit deeper under the faded comforter she’s dragged off the bed and into the living room._

_“Hey,” Jared says absently, can of Campbell’s soup in one hand, backpack strap in the other. “You doing okay?”_

_“Just tired,” Adrianne sighs, and then she takes in the can in Jared’s hand and her usually pretty face screws up into a petulant pout._

_“What?” Jared knows what._

_“Miso soup! I want miso soup! From the little place near campus. Where is my soup?”_

_Jared sets down the sad, little can on the old, scuffed coffee table and drapes an arm around Adrianne as she dissolves into a fit of coughing. He rubs her back and waits until she breathes deep, her gasps wetter than normal._

_“Sorry,” she mutters once she catches her breath._

_“I know, you’re a right bitch when you’re sick,” Jared teases and Adrianne glares back, yet there’s no anger in her eyes._

_“I hate this,” she whispers and Jared strokes her damp, tangled mess of hair._

_“I know.”_

_“I want miso.”_

_“I know. It’s just that the joint was closed.”_

_Adrianne frowns. “That place is never closed. Remember when we got super baked and went there for egg rolls with Chad at three a.m.?”_

_“Yeah. Good times. But they had a sign on the door. They weren’t open.”_

_Adrianne fumbles feebly for the can on the coffee table. “Cream of mushroom? Seriously?”_

_“Not many choices left at the store. I dunno, maybe they’re restocking or something. It’s weird, I mean, I know this ‘global super flu’ is going around, but things feel off.”_

_“News stations said a couple weeks, tops,” Adrianne says, then yawns._

_“It’s just strange that nearly everyone is sick at the same time. Creepy. That’s why I’m home early. Professor didn’t show. Most of the class didn’t show.”_

_It had been eerie. Jared was used to the halls teeming with his fellow students, people strewn across the grass chatting and studying, shouts and laughter and vibrant life. But it was quiet.   Somber. The halls and lawns were empty, and Jared only caught sight of a few people scurrying around campus, moving quickly, almost as if the school was haunted and they were afraid._

_“It’ll probably be your turn soon, babe,” Adrianne says, shivering._

_“Then you can nurse me on the couch.”_

_“And bring you shitty soup you don’t like.”_

_“Damn right,” Jared grins and then tucks the comforter around Adrianne’s shoulders. “Want me to heat it up?”_

_“No. Just stay with me.”_

_“Thought I’d go see Chad in a bit. He didn’t return my text.”_

_“No. Stay with me.”_

_“Okay, Miss Whiny,” Jared says and sinks down on the floor beside Adrianne. He strokes her curly, blonde, sweat-soaked hair, tries not to worry, and absently texts his friend for the fifth time._

Jared gasps awake. It’s a nightmare, or a memory. Adrianne’s dying again, right in front of him, but he just thinks she has some shitty, powered-up super bug. Everyone’s dying, all at once, all at the same time, all over the world. Nobody knows it.

“What is it?” Jensen asks sleepily.

“Soup,” Jared wheezes, shuddering. It’s all he can say.

“You want soup?”

“No. Hold me, please.”

“Okay.”

Jensen wraps Jared up in his arms, lets him shake and cry. He’s good at that. He’s unflappable. Every memory, every painful lesson Jared has etched in his brain, Jensen is free of. There’s no grief or fear because there’s nothing. Jared’s not sure which is worse: to hurt so much because of everything you remember, or to have nothing to think about, nothing to hold on to at all.

Jensen comes and Jensen goes. Most days he’s there when Jared wakes. Sometimes, there are stretches of time with no Jensen and Jared holds on fiercely to that lie—promise—Jensen made. When Jensen returns he never remembers what happened, not where he goes or what they do to him.

During the day, when Jensen is home, they play cards. The day after Jared mentioned making a deck of cards out of toilet paper, a card pack appeared in the living area. The aliens are apparently listening. Jared asked for someone and they gave him Jensen. He asked for entertainment and now he has a deck of cards, not new, the edges worn a bit from use, pilfered from who knows where. It is bounty from the alien captors. Jared drags up every card game he ever learned, in youth group and Boy Scouts, whatever is still lingering in his brain, and teaches them to Jensen. Go Fish, War, and various incarnations of Poker. Some that are difficult to play with only two people. He plays them with Jensen when Jensen is in the habitat, but their favorite remains Texas Hold’em.

“You like this game?” Jared had asked and Jensen had nodded, trying and failing not to appear too smug. He was winning. His smiles were rare and blinding, lighting up his face.

“Must be because you’re from Texas, too.”

Jensen had frozen. “What do you mean?”

“You talk like me. I’m from Texas, originally.” Now he’s from Alien Habitat, Location Unknown.

“Maybe,” Jensen had muttered. He didn’t like to talk about it. But Jared couldn’t help himself. It was a brain teaser better than any game or puzzle the aliens could offer them.

On the days with no Jensen, days when Jared is waiting on a promise—and absolutely not pacing or screaming or tearing his hair—he does his calisthenics, building back up muscle tone. Sit ups, pushups, burpees. What little yoga he remembers from that one physical education course Chad dragged him to. He pushes his body hard, to the point of exhaustion. When he’s tired, it’s easier not to think about a return to loneliness. To entertain the fear that Jensen might fail to come back one day.

But Jensen is here now, and he’s holding Jared in his arms, and everything else is pale and useless. Press it down and bury it. Bury it deep. There’s only the here and now.

“Better?” Jensen asks after a while and Jared nods. They’re pressed chest to chest, and Jared feels safe and warm as he comes down from his terror. Jensen isn’t often there when he wakes, more often he’s waiting in the living room, so Jared savors this moment. The two of them waking up side by side, like this is their apartment and they’ve chosen to live together. Jared feels so full of love and gratitude for Jensen that his chest feels tight, heart pounding.

Even so, Jared really has no excuse for bending his head and sliding his lips over Jensen’s in a clumsy kiss.

“I…I don’t…” Jensen’s eyes are huge, his mouth damp and hanging open. He still looks lovely, even gaping stupidly like a fish. His hand rises to his cheek, his fingers nervously tapping near his mouth. That mouth that Jared foolishly kissed.

“I’m sorry,” Jared whispers. But he’s not.

Jared wants to say more, to make some useless excuse, but then the gas rises up and swallows them both.

Gay penguins.

Jensen stays gone for a while and Jared thinks about the stupid thing that he did. Kissing Jensen. For a moment, he forgot he was being watched. Of course the aliens are watching, always watching, and Jared making his move on his fellow captor may have not been appreciated.

Jared remembers a news article he read about two gay penguins. They were both female and everyone thought it was cute that they were a couple. Maybe that they should even have a little penguin wedding at the zoo. Already had the tuxedos, after all. Never mind that as much as the two penguins were affectionate with each other, they might not want to participate in an archaic, patriarchal, and extremely human ceremony.

The aliens apparently don’t think Jared and Jensen are _cute_.

Jared doesn’t think it is homophobia. If an alien race can master advanced space flight, one should reasonably expect them to be far too innovative for bigotry. Maybe it’s simple biology. Jared can’t reproduce with another male, after all.

For Jared’s part, he’s not really gay. He’s not really straight, either. Most of his life he’s noticed men, found them attractive. But not enough for the risk. And women have always been equally as alluring, with the benefit of being socially acceptable partners. Maybe that made Jared a coward in his old life, he doesn’t really know. He’d found Adrianne and she’d found him, and it had been enough for Jared. Enough for a lifetime, if only they’d been granted that long.

The one time he takes a risk, and maybe he’s lost everything.

The more Jared thinks about it, the worse he feels. He can see Jensen’s shock-widened eyes, his slack mouth. Jared didn’t ask and Jensen didn’t offer.

Jared sits on the bed and rocks and stews in his shame and guilt. Maybe Jensen had been married, with a wife and white-picket fence and 2.5 kids. Maybe he had been a priest or a monk, celibate and holy. Neither of them knows anything about Jensen’s history, about who he was and what he wants.

Disapproving aliens is one thing. The idea that Jared hurt his one friend, that wonderful, amnesiac grump who likes taking care of Jared and crows just a little too much when he wins at cards, that’s what hurts. Jared didn’t ask.

He should have asked.

Jared gets up and runs through his fitness routine, once, twice, three times. Until his built-up muscles are shaking. He eats his meals. There are two plates in the fridge. He takes a long shower and stares at the bathtub. It’s been a long time since he’s worried about the bathtub. More useless guilt.

Jensen doesn’t return.


	8. Small Matter If He Come Or Stay

_“Chad?”_

_Jared lets himself in with his spare key. He has a ring of them attached to the belt holding up his jeans: Chad’s key, the key to his parent’s house, the key to his car, Adrianne’s key for her bike lock, and even the key he found on the sidewalk, shining in the sun. Maybe he can find the owner of that key and give it back. Maybe he can find someone._

_The idea that he might not find anyone is staggering._

_Chad’s apartment is dark, though Jared’s become used to that since the electricity stopped working. The air is stale and hot, and there’s a strange, cloying, funky smell to the close air._

_Chad’s apartment has never been a sweet smelling haven of cleanliness. Chad gets high on a regular basis and the skunky, grassy smell of weed is permanently adhered to the nubby fabric of Chad’s second-hand furniture. Jared can see plates with petrified pizza slices and glasses growing slushy science projects littered around the living room. It is dustier than Jared remembers, but business as usual for his hygiene-challenged friend._

_Jared pauses in front of the wide-screen TV, the multiple game consoles piled underneath in a sloppy heap. He smiles faintly. Jared can’t remember the last time he walked in and Chad wasn’t parked in front of the screen in his bean bag, eyes glued to the screen, watching his big-breasted avatar slay an army of elves or orcs or whatever the flavor of the week was._

_“Chad?”_

_Jared wipes at the sweat dripping into his eyes. It’s so hot in here and it smells so gross. He can’t believe Chad would let it get that bad. Of course, maybe Chad isn’t here. Maybe he got better and headed to his parents’ house. That’s where Jared’s going next: home. But it’s far and none of the airports are open and even when the phones were still working, no one was answering at home. A week before Adrianne—a week before—someone siphoned the gas out of Jared’s car._

_But Jared won’t leave without Chad, and he doesn’t believe Chad would leave him behind either. Before everything went to hell, Chad would text or call dozens of times a day. It used to drive Adrianne crazy; the two of them in the middle of a movie or lazily making out, and there was Chad’s custom ringtone, the one he’d programmed into Jared’s phone himself, interrupting them._

_“Does your boyfriend know you’re cheating on him?” Adrianne would tease, licking a stripe up Jared’s neck._

_“Ignore it,” Jared would say, for the millionth time, and Adrianne would roll her eyes and answer the phone. She’d never minded sharing his attention with his loud-mouthed best friend, wasn’t possessive or jealous in that way._

_“He won’t stop, you know he won’t stop,” she always said. “Hello, Chad.”_

_Jared smiles at the memory. Then he crumples to the floor and sobs and sobs for a long time._

_“Chad!”_

_No answer. Jared peels himself off the floor and heads for the bedroom. Maybe Chad is too sick to get up._

Everyone who’s too sick to get up is dead, _Jared’s mind shrieks. He can almost feel the dead weight of Adrianne in his arms. He left her body against the wall of the hospital, along with all the others. Tripped over the fallen forms of nurses and doctors on his flight out the hospital doors._

_The sheets are tangled stiffly on the bed.   There is a fine coating of dust on the silky black fabric. Nobody’s sleeping here, and the smell’s getting stronger._

Please no _, Jared prays. It’s as useless as anything Jared’s done, and prayer has helped no one yet. No kindly god seems to be listening. Jared prays anyway, soundless words mouthed in frantic repetition as he swings open the bathroom door._

_No one is here. But Chad’s bath tub is truly disgusting. It’s piled with this grayish-greenish black goo, lumpy and taking up all the space. The intense, sickly-sweet smell is overpowering._

_Jared stares at the clotted pudding in the tub. His eyes drift left and right, up and down. An optical illusion slowly becoming clear. A mystery picture. Stare hard enough and you can see the sailboat._

_Shape of a nose in the pudding. Tufts of sticky, blond hair sticking out of the top. The bare, sketch outline of hands and feet, melting, dissolving._

_Chad is in the tub. What used to be Chad._

_Jared is two steps out of the bathroom and vomiting violently on the dirty bedroom carpet. He’s screaming and puking so fast and hard that he can barely breathe._

Jared jerks awake.

“Jensen!”

No one is beside him in the slick sheets. Jared shivers as air hits the pinpricks of sweat beading on his trembling body. The lights are dim, telling Jared it is his nighttime, and he is supposed to be asleep.

“Jensen!”

Bedroom, bathroom, living room. But Jared halts at the entry to the bathroom, legs trembling. The memory of Chad in the tub is too fresh, too real. Jared collapses to his knees.

“I let you down,” he whispers, tears tracking down his cheek. “I’m so sorry, I let you down. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry I didn’t do better. I’m sorry.”

He’s never said the words before. He was too shell-shocked. He didn’t want to believe that Chad was dead. But saying them now, he can picture Chad’s sly face, that feline smile. Forgiven. He knows Chad forgives him. Chad would have never held a grudge.

“Thank you,” Jared whispers, and it’s a prayer more to Chad than to any god in the heavens. He stands up and stumbles back towards the bedroom. There’s no one to comfort him now, no anchor in the storm of swirling emotions, but maybe the dreams won’t be so bad. Forgiven. He’s not imagining it.

Jared is about to lay down in his sterile nest when he hears a thump in the living room.

“Hello? Jared?”

“Jensen,” Jared breathes and he’s off the bed and nearly sprinting, eager to see that adored face.

Jensen stands in the living room, same as the first day. He turns and smiles, his small, reserved smile. Beautiful.

“You came back.”

“Yes,” Jensen says, and then he hesitates. He steps in close and presses his mouth to Jared’s in a fumbling kiss. It’s sweet and inexperienced. Unexpected.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Jared says nervously. “They could take you away.”

“No, I want to,” Jensen whispers. “I want to take the chance. Don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“I don’t know…I don’t remember,” Jensen says. “Show me?”

The innocence is intoxicating. Jared takes Jensen by the hand, leads him into the bedroom. It’s a more intimate space, even though privacy is just an illusion.

“What do I do?” Jensen asks when they’re laying side by side on the bed. He lies stiffly, like he’s a virgin waiting to be ravished. Maybe he is.

“Just kissing. Just kissing,” Jared soothes him.

“Show me,” Jensen says.

Jared leans over, and slots their lips together. A slow, gentle kiss, closed mouths. It’s easy to do. He may want Jensen sexually, hungrily, but right now there’s a reverence. Jensen’s his savior. Care-giver. Fellow prisoner. Anchor in a lost world. Jared wants every touch to be holy.

Jensen’s mouth is lax and warm. Accepting. Gradually Jared feels Jensen’s body loosen up, tension draining away. Jared keeps the kisses easy and light. Endless. Adrianne used to complain that when Jared got too excited, his kisses got wetter, sloppier. She’d wipe her face and grimace, while he made barking sounds.

Jared quietly puts the thought of Adrianne to the side. She’ll probably always be present, coloring every experience Jared will have with Jensen. It’s okay. The memories are both sad and good. _His girl._

After a while Jensen’s lips echo Jared’s, moving in sync. Jared’s blood warms, and he adds teeth and tongue, a wet stroke inside sweetly parted lips, a careful nibble of a bottom lip. He relishes every breathy sigh, Jensen’s face cupped between his hands. There are no words between them and Jared follows Jensen’s cues; the way he nips at Jared’s tongue, the way his breath quickens. Pleased and pleasing. Perhaps no one has ever kissed Jensen this way. This might be his first kiss, his first embrace. Whatever he had before has been wiped away. In this lonely place, Jared is his first everything.

Time has passed swiftly or not at all, and Jared pulls back, content to end it for now. He’s hungry for more, but this is enough. After his nightmare and the following emotional upheaval, his eyelids are very heavy.

“Why did you stop?” Jensen complains and the petulant tone in his voice makes Jared smile.

“Sleep now,” Jared sighs. “Do you want more later?”

“Yes.”

“Then sleep for now.”

The roll together, slotted like spoons in a drawer. Jared slings an arm over Jensen, tangles their legs. His eyes close and he isn’t sleeping yet, just drifting. It’s nice.

A little later, Jensen rolls to face him and says drowsily, “You’ve never let me down. You know that, right Jared?”

Jared cringes at the words a bit. But he strokes a large hand against Jensen’s back, forces his body to relax and whispers. “I know.”

 

They kiss long and they kiss often. It’s a breath of life in a sterile place. Jensen appears more frequently now; Jared often wakes with his friend already beside him, eyes hooded not with sleep but with desire. They must have the silent approval of their captors because Jensen and Jared kiss and speak and kiss even more, and nothing comes to separate them.

Jensen is a willow tree, Jared thinks dreamily as he lies beneath him. Jensen’s eyes are blocking everything out, like the cool, green leaves of the willow, sheltering and shading. Jensen’s freckles are dappled light sifting between the branches. Jared rears up to press his nose to Jensen’s neck and take in that faint, woodsy scent. Jensen’s hand cradles the back of Jared’s neck, cool and pale and rough, the other braced below them on the bed. He’s strong enough to weather any storm.

There’s no greenery here, in their habitat, and that’s another mistake. Jared would like to walk on a green lawn, brush his hand against a flowering bush. The fake picture window with its fake garden flowers just makes the omission all the more glaring.

“I would like a succulent,” Jared says out loud, experimentally.

“What?”

“I’m asking the aliens for a house plant,” Jared says solemnly, and Jensen laughs and presses their mouths together in a kiss.


	9. Laugh Yourself and Turn Away

“Aren’t you angry?” Jared asks.

Jensen has been gone. Jensen has been gone the longest time yet since he and Jared left their cordial friendship in the ashes and resurrected their relationship as an intimate romance. Since that time, there hadn’t been too many days in succession where Jared was waiting on a promise, holding himself together by threads comprised of the memories of Jensen’s voice and Jensen’s touch. Counting silently through the loneliness and the solitude, making it to the end of the day and hoping not to wake up alone.

“Aren’t you angry?” Jared repeats. Jensen always seems unperturbed by his absences, his memory loss. It takes everything in Jared not to scream at the ceiling when he’s alone, to make threats and promises, too plead and whine. Jensen just seems to take everything in stride.

“Should I be?” Jensen asks, propping himself up on an elbow. There’s a faint smile on his face. Sometimes he just seems to be humoring Jared, tolerating his extremely emotional responses.

“They took everything from you,” Jared mutters. Jensen is back and Jensen wants to cuddle and kiss and Jared wants that, too. But there’s anger thrumming in his veins, anger that won’t be soothed by a soft touch. Not right now.

“It doesn’t sound like there was much for them to take, listening to you describe it,” Jensen replies. “Are you angry? You seem angry to me.”

“They took a lot,” Jared deflects. Yes, he’s angry. Jensen’s the only one here, the only target for Jared to direct his anger at. He doesn’t want to do that.

He just wishes Jensen was angry as well. And yes, perhaps then he _is_ angry at Jensen, who seems to view their situation with mild amusement, who seems unmotivated to recover any trace of who he was.

“Everyone I know dead? The life I had gone? Maybe they did me a favor.”

“They shouldn’t have taken it,” Jared answers. _And you should care that they did_ , he thinks, but doesn’t say. Annoying Jensen often makes him disappear.

“Why?” Jensen reaches out, grips Jared’s shoulder. “So I could suffer like you?”

“I deserve it,” Jared hisses. He does. If he’s the only person left alive to remember, to carry the guilt and the grief, he’ll take it. The living momento mori for all the lives lost, for his family, for Adrianne and Chad.

Someone has to bear that weight.

“I wish we…I wish I could take it away,” Jensen says, smoothing a finger across the crinkle in Jared’s brow. His eyes are soft and loving, wide and willow-green. “I wish you didn’t have to suffer like this. Do you wish you were like me? That the aliens had taken it all away?”

“Someone has to remember,” Jared replies stubbornly.

“You can share it with me,” Jensen says, pulling Jared closer a bit impatiently. “I’ll remember what you tell me. I’ll suffer it with you.”

Jared nods, and then relaxes in acceptance when Jensen surges forward to press their lips together. Jared can confess his sins and Jensen can bear witness, although he can offer no absolution. He’s more like a child, listening to a ghost story, the horrors only a thrill up the spine. No substance.

Jensen deepens the kiss, tongue tangling with Jared’s, coaxing him to relax, to forget. It’s both sweet and hot, and Jared sinks into it, drowns in the thrill of his love’s embrace.

Jared just wishes Jensen could grieve with him. But like Jensen’s name and past, these more painful emotions just seem beyond him.

Weeks—months?—into their kisses and Jensen suddenly says, “I want more.”

“There is no more,” Jared says, face mock serious and Jensen lightly punches his shoulder.

“I know there’s more. We could do…other things. Don’t you want to?”

Jared does. But it’s not easy to forgot his silent and mysterious observers, out of sight and ever present, watching his every move. Jensen is innocent, every touch a new line in his abruptly-truncated history. Jared wants the two of them to document each step, each caress, in their minds. Something lovely to hold onto in an uncertain world. The idea that someone else is cataloguing what should be theirs alone—jotting down the details in a clinical and dispassionate manner—is upsetting.

“I want to see you,” Jensen insists and any protest Jared might have given drifts away from his mind. He knows he won’t refuse Jensen anything. His anchor, his tree.

Jared strips off his sweats and lies back on the bed. His skin is paler, no sun here to tan it brown, but his muscles are more defined. The food on offer is both perfectly balanced and unappealing, and there’s no way to indulge in sweets or overeat. What little padding Jared did have wore away long before he was placed in his habitat; stripped from his bones by grief and illness and deprivation.

Jensen sits on the bed beside him, still dressed. His avid eyes roam over his fellow captive, and Jared feels himself flush all over. To be seen, to be watched. To be admired and lusted after. It’s a high Jared’s always been happy to chase.

_“Shameless,” Adrianne murmurs as she stands in the bathroom door. Jared’s showering with the door open, mildewed curtain pulled back and to the side. “And you’re getting water on the floor.”_

_“You don’t have to watch,” Jared teases. He runs his soapy hands down his torso, teasing his own body. Fingers circling a nipple, sliding back to cup his ass. “You can come in.”_

_“Unfair. If I come in, then I can’t see you.” Adrianne presses a palm against her pussy through her pajama- pants, hips shifting restlessly._

_“Take off your clothes,” Jared begs. “Touch yourself and make yourself come and then come in here with me.”_

Jared’s eyes fly open. He hadn’t realized he’d drifted away.

“What is it?” Jensen asks. Jared can only shake his head.

“Nothing.”

“Were you thinking about that girl?”

Jared talks about Adrianne. He talks about her all the time. About the apartment they shared, the life they’d had. Adrianne in dresses and jeans and swearing when Jared talked over her favorite television programs. Adrianne not wanting to get married, because she didn’t want to get divorced. Jensen listens, let’s Jared safely revisit the good times. Jared doesn’t want to talk about how he’d let her down. She hadn’t been an old-fashioned girl, but she’d never minded a bit of chivalry. Jared had loved opening her car door, bringing her little presents for no occasion whatsoever, growling and posturing good-naturedly when they were out and other men—or women sometimes—showed her some attention. A song and dance. When the time had come to really step up and take care of her, Jared had failed.

But Jared doesn’t tell Jensen about his most intimate moments with Adrianne. He doesn’t kiss and tell.   Those memories are hot and tender and sometimes kinky, yet private. Sacred. Sometimes when he’s kissing Jensen, he finds himself saying, “Adrianne and I used to…” or “Adrianne liked…” before he quickly clams up.

“You can tell me,” Jensen persists. He always does. He’s very curious about Jared’s sexual past, but apparently not jealous or insecure. Jared wonders if he doesn’t know or understand what possessiveness is. “Did you do this for her? Show yourself for her?”

“It’s just you and me,” Jared says firmly.

Jensen shrugs. He hasn’t given up probing for information yet, but he’s good at letting go when Jared doesn’t want to share.

“Do you like this?”

“Yes,” Jared answers honestly, setting his mind firmly in the here and now.

“You’re exposed,” Jensen muses. “Vulnerable.”

“Yes,” Jared sighs. So very, very visible before another’s eyes.

“And now what?”

“You could take off your clothes, too,” Jared prompts, reaching for the hem of Jensen’s shirt.

“Not yet,” Jensen says, tugging the shirt back down. Unlike Jared, his freckled skin is a pale gold nearly everywhere, like he’s one day back from a beach vacation. “You first.”

“Okay.”

“So now what? Can I touch you?”

“Yes.”

“Show me how to touch you,” Jensen says innocently and Jared moans.

“You like that?”

“Yes. God, yes.”

“Let me see. Touch yourself.”

Jared lets his hand drift lazily across his own body. The pads of his fingers graze his jaw, linger on his full, lower lip. He darts out a tongue to wet them and watches Jensen’s’ eyes darken.

“I could lick you,” Jared offers breathily. “I could lick you all over.”

“Yes. Yes, I want that. Later. Want to see you, now.”

Jared palms the length of his neck, presses a bit on his throat to feel the hitch in his breath, then moves his hand down to stroke his own chest. Up and down, back and forth, one hand gliding and pressing, the other still tangled in the hem of Jensen’s shirt. He pulls and plucks at his own nipples, feeling them tighten, pressure almost too hard to be pleasurable.

He wishes that Jensen would give him more direction; Jared’s never minded an order or two in bed. Tell him where to touch and how. He’d like to be told whether to stroke or pinch, gentle or hard. Fingertips or the sharper scrape of nails. But Jensen seems content to let Jared run the show, to decide how and where to touch himself.

Jensen’s eyes drift down to where Jared’s cock is lying hard against his belly, just a drop of wetness at the tip. “You like this a lot.”

“Yes.” It’s more a hiss than word.

“Keep going.”

Jared’s hand drifts down over his own stomach, fingernails leaving light trails of color, nothing too intense. He traces each sharply defined hip bone, feeling his body jerk slightly at the ticklish sensation. His cock is throbbing with the beat of his heart, almost quivering. Jared trails his hand closer, just brushing the sensitive head, focusing on the tender skin of his stomach.

“What are you waiting for?” Jensen demands, and Jared smiles and palms his own cock. He strokes it luxuriously, all the time in the world, and watches Jensen watching him.

It’s lazy, sensual, just Jared touching himself, his eyes on Jensen and only Jensen. Jared can see his lover’s gaze focusing in on the show Jared is performing, eager as a dog hungering for a bone. In this moment, Jared is also a voyeur, and Jensen hasn’t once looked at his face, so he doesn’t know it. There’s so much passion racing across Jensen’s features, lust and hunger, and it feels so wicked that Jared gets to see this private glimpse; Jensen doesn’t even know what secrets his face is revealing.

“I want you to come,” Jensen moans and Jared flushes, belly tight, surprised.   The words are delicious.

“So soon?”

“You said you would lick me,” Jensen complains.

“I did. I will. Do you want to help me with this?”

Jensen’s eyes light up. He reaches out, palm warm and rough, and brushes Jared’s hand aside.


	10. Neither Caught With Salt Nor Chaff

There’s always a place, before and after the kisses and the touches. A quiet moment, when it’s just the two of them. It’s a lie, they’re always being watched, but there’s this suspension in time, when it feels like they can just be with each other.

Jensen asks Jared about where he’d like to live. They’re building their dream home, piece by piece. In a perfect world, they’d walk out the door to freedom, hand in hand. Settle down together in a quiet place, full of open spaces.

Some days there’s a wraparound porch, and other days, it’s a courtyard. Rooms are added on and taken off, as is their whim. Jensen wants Jared to be extravagant; he encourages Jared to conjure up a mansion with a wine cellar and a billiards room. Turrets and towers and balconies overlooking the garden. Jensen always wants them to have a garden.

“I love a garden,” Jensen muses as they lie side by side.

Jared doesn’t question how he knows. He’s learned so much about his fellow captive, through quiet conversations and ardent lovemaking. Jensen’s got a selfish streak in bed, impatient and demanding, in sharp contrast to the quiet, more reticent persona he shares with Jared out of bed. So far Jared has been happy to match him move for move, serving the needs of his imperious lover.

“I don’t want a castle,” Jared argues. “It sounds too hard to clean.”

“That’s what servants are for,” Jensen says, rolling onto his back and yawning.

“If there are servants then it won’t be just you and me.” Jared doesn’t mention that they may be the last two people on Earth, making domestic help somewhat hard to come by.

“We’ll tell them to go away then,” Jensen says, voice become playfully bossy. His bedroom voice. Jared feels heat rush through him at the sound of it.

“I want a small house,” Jared murmurs. “Just one story. Simple bright rooms. Lots of windows. I want to be close to the beach. I want to be so close I can wake at night and hear the rush of the ocean. I want to know I can get up and run down the beach in the dark, miles and miles of sand under my feet.”

Jensen rolls back on his side, propping himself up on an elbow. “If you wake in the night, you better not be going running.”

Jared smiles and leans in to kiss him.

“A big, low bed, with soft, flannel sheets,” Jared continues. “Low enough that I can get on my knees for you.”

Jensen purrs a bit at that, reaching out to trace Jared’s lips. His favorite thing is Jared sucking him off and he demands it quite often. Jared’s happy to oblige, his mouth quickly learning the shape and taste of Jensen, stretching his lips and pulsing on his tongue. The bed in the habitat is impractically high for a seated blowjob, even for someone as tall as Jared, but the couch in the living area works fine. It’s more embarrassing for Jared, his mind telling him that the bedroom is more private, though it very likely is not.

“And a garden,” Jensen insists maddeningly, his hand still stroking Jared’s mouth, one finger darting in to stroke over Jared’s tongue. “Ow.”

“And a garden,” Jared says laughing, removing his teeth from Jensen’s finger. He shivers a little as Jensen traces the enamel with one finger. “What kind of plants?”

Jensen is quiet for a long time, absently stroking his finger over Jared’s teeth. Then he says, “I don’t know.”

“Citrus trees,” Jared decides. “Orange and lemon. I want to pluck the fruit right off the branches and cut into them. Feel the taste of it, sharp and bright.”

There isn’t much that Jared is reluctant to do in bed. Adrianne always called him shameless, and he is happy with the label. Sex is fun and playful and intense, and he doesn’t understand why anyone would limit themselves due to prudery or shame, why they wouldn’t try anything and everything at least once.

Well, except for the one thing Jared never wants to try.

“Really? Not even a finger?” Adrianne had said. Her mouth had been hovering around the head of his cock, light, teasing kisses and licks, but when her fingers had drifted deftly back behind Jared’s balls, he had jumped and then grabbed her hand.

“Not even a finger,” Jared had told her firmly.

He knew she was disappointed. After all, she had a harness and a dauntingly large strap-on in a box in her closet, the legacy of her ex-boyfriend, a man apparently more adventurous than Jared.

And Jared himself doesn’t know why for him this is such a hard limit. Perhaps it’s tied up in social conditioning, in ideas about manliness and masculinity. But that’s not exactly it. Jared’s never been shy when any of his partners have dressed him up in stockings and panties and high heels. One of his girlfriends had a pole set up in her bedroom and Jared gave her quite a few private dances. This is somehow different.

Two weeks into the newness of his relationship with Adrianne and Jared had suffered through three days of internet printouts about the function of the prostate, pegging videos bought at the local sex shop, and lectures about how good it would feel, his stomach churning all the while, his “no” firm upon his lips.

Then Adrianne had taken his face in his hands, looked deep into his eyes and said, “Please forgive me.”

It wasn’t until one afternoon when Adrianne was climbing on his dick with languid grace, and Jared was supporting her weight in his hands, but mindful to let her set the pace of descent, that he realized what it was. The act of entering another’s body with a part of your own. He was always so careful to let his lovers decide how and when, to direct him in and to say how much and how deep. To decide how long he could stay, warm and wet and shivering with pleasure.

Jared had looked up at Adrianne’s flushed face, her body easily accepting and containing his own, and had been humbled. It was an act he was sure he could never perform.

So trust, perhaps. Privacy and autonomy. Maybe it’s just that there’s a piece of Jared that he wants to keep to himself, unreached and all his own.

And of course this is exactly the piece that Jensen wants.

“I don’t want to do that,” Jared had said when Jensen had broached the subject. He had been only mildly surprised that Jensen had refused to accept his “no.”

Maybe it’s because sex and companionship is new to Jensen. If he’s had a lover before, he doesn’t remember.   The give and take between desires and boundaries, the natural limits one learns when navigating a romance, which also must be missing from his memories, along with the names and interests of any partners he might have had.

Perhaps Jared had set a bad precedent in their rendezvous. He’s never been in a relationship with a man. Especially not someone like Jensen, beautiful and demanding, somewhat forceful when aroused. Jared’s always been happy to be bossed around, to let another take the lead; being told what to do is one of his favorite hot buttons. But as Jensen presses and Jared nervously demurs, he realizes he’s never had a lover fail to listen.

It’s late in the day, perhaps, and they’re in bed, while Jensen is dreaming up a garden. A garden for their dream house, which this time is a farm house, sturdy wooden walls that are rough to the touch, a pine floor, chickens clucking and scratching in front of the door.

“Maybe roses,” Jared offers. His mouth is still filled with the taste of Jensen, smoky on his tongue. “But the thornless ones.”

“Afraid of a little prick?” Jensen asks and it’s passive-aggressive as hell. Not unexpected though, the way things have been going, and Jared feels his shoulders tighten in both anger and apprehension.

Jared knows he shouldn’t do it. It isn’t true. But he lets his eyes drift down Jensen’s body and snarls, “No, I’m not afraid of a _little_ prick.”

It’s their first fight. One shot fired each and then they retreat to their respective sides of the bed, stiff and agitated as wet cats.

The next day Jensen doesn’t come.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Two days, no Jensen. He doesn’t come. Of course it’s ridiculous, he doesn’t have control over when the aliens drop him into Jared’s habitat.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Three days. It’s been a long time since they played this game. Jensen just in the next room, just out of reach. Jared can’t stop searching, even as he curses and mutters. It isn’t fair.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Four days. Jensen’s pouting. He’s pouting with the aliens. Jared pictures them all sitting around a table, cup of tea at their elbows, listening to Jensen whine about Jared and his “it’s-an-exit-not-an-entrance” policy on anal.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Five days.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Six days.

Bedroom, bathroom, living room.

Seven days. Eight days. Nine days. Jared can’t stop looking.

Jared’s lying on the bed when he hears a thump in the living room. He doesn’t get up. His whole body is aching with fear and need and desire and grief.

He hears footsteps in the hall, soft and measured. Then the door swings open and Jensen is looming over the bed, filling Jared’s vision.

“Hi,” he says, as if he hasn’t been gone for weeks—months?

“Hi,” Jared whispers. He’s afraid to reach out. He knows it isn’t Jensen’s fault. Jensen can’t punish him by holding a grudge and storming out of the habitat; only the aliens control his movements. But Jared never got to say he was sorry. And for a long time he thought he would never have the opportunity; that he would never see his— _friend? lover? fellow prisoner?_ —again.

Jensen says slowly, “I was gone a long time, wasn’t I.”

“I’m sorry,” Jared sobs and then Jensen is gathering him up and holding him, back to chest, the way he always does, anchoring Jared, sheltering him in the storm. He’s warm and he’s here, and it’s the only thing that matters.

He promised to come back. And he did.


	11. When He Nestles In Your Hand At Last

The next time Jensen asks, Jared says yes.

There’s no part of himself he wants to keep separate from Jensen. Jensen is his world.

Jared is naked on his hands and knees, Jensen at his back. Large, warm hands drift across Jared’s hips and thighs, as he shakes and shivers. If he had a choice, he would have preferred to be on his back, looking up at Jensen. All the literature Adrianne had brought home a long time ago suggests that this is the easiest way, and Jared said as much to Jensen, but Jared would still take a bit of pain if it meant he could look into reassuring eyes.

There’s a wet finger circling his rim, coated in lotion from the bathroom, and Jared jumps at the sudden touch.

Jensen laughs. “You okay?”

No, no, he’s not. But it doesn’t hurt. Jared holds himself still.

One lone wet finger, cool against his body. It circles slowly and the sensation becomes pleasant, smooth and silky. Jared closes his eyes tight and lets himself feel.   Jensen is pleasuring him and Jared wants to be good for his lover.

One finger pressing in and Jared winces a bit. Gets a soft slap on his rump for his troubles. It feels about as he’d expected, someone sticking a finger in his ass. Invasive and odd and unpleasant.

“Just relax,” Jensen whispers and Jared does as best as he is able. Slowly, his body adjusts and he’s able to admit that the sensation is somewhat pleasurable.

Jensen slides two fingers in slickly and it’s not painful, but it isn’t much good either.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?” Jensen asks breathily as he probes inside Jared’s body. At least he sounds like he’s having a good time.

“Prostate.”

“What is it supposed to feel like?”

“Like a lump or something I guess.” Jared had been trying real hard not to absorb any of the information from Adrianne’s well-meaning handouts, and as much as he should regret not paying attention, he doesn’t.

Jensen’s fingers brush against a place just inside Jared’s ass and he feels his stomach jerk with the as something sparks a bit inside his body.

“Something?”

“Maybe.” Jared shudders as Jensen brushes that place again.

“Does it feel good?”

“It feels…intense. Maybe I need to be turned on for it to feel good?” Jared’s dick is limp between his legs. Jensen was too eager to get started to spare much time for foreplay, and Jared is too anxious to allow himself to get properly aroused.

Jensen reaches beneath Jared and strokes Jared’s cock. He fumbles with timing the movement of his hand with his fingers punching in and out of Jared’s ass, and it’s clumsy yet not half bad.

Jared closes his eyes. He can see it in his mind: Jensen is his willow tree. He stretches, sheltering and substantial, covering Jared and keeping him safe. There’s life and greenery here, there’s a garden they’ve planned together, and Jared pushes away the fear.

Jensen is making soothing sounds and they might be words, but Jared just wants to feel. He wishes there was grass beneath his knees, grass as green as Jensen’s eyes. He imagines that they are outside in the privacy of their garden, scent of roses and lime in the air. The space is hidden and private, and he’s exposed for no one but Jensen. Just the two of them under the sky, bare to each other and each other alone.

Jensen is saying something and it sounds like “Ready?” but Jared can only dig his fingers into the soil beneath his hands, churning up the scent of dirt and growing things.

There’s a push and a shove, and Jared is wrenched back, away from the garden and all the living, growing green. He’s back in the bedroom, slippery bedding clenched under his sweaty fists. He’s stretched open, hot and aching. Jensen is deep inside him. It burns.

“See, it’s okay,” Jensen huffs and Jared drops to his elbows, presses his grimacing mouth to the plastic-y sheets. Jensen is reaching back beneath him to pet and stroke his cock again, their garden beckoning, but Jared can’t get back there, he can’t claw his way back to the earth and the grass and the sky. He’s stuck in his habitat, aching and speared and exposed, feeling like he’s shitting around Jensen’s dick.

“Shh,” Jensen whispers and Jared’s making that high, whining noise, the one he hasn’t made in a while, not since the last time Jensen went away and left him alone, with no idea if he’d ever see him again. He bites down on his lip hard to stifle the sound.

But the noise seems to have a profound effect on Jensen. His movements slow, becoming more languid and gentle. He drapes himself over Jared’s back, covering him and protecting him. Jensen angles his hips and then his cock is sporadically brushing against that place inside of Jared, that swollen spot that is supposed to feel so good and doesn’t seem to live up to the hype.

It’s better. Jensen is taking care of him, and he’s demanding and pushy in bed, but he’s still Jensen. Still his friend and his love, the one that takes care of him. Jared closes his eyes and relaxes his body, lets the sensation become more acceptable. Maybe even a little satisfying.

But he can’t find his way back to the garden.

A while later, when Jared’s begun to feel his dick throb under Jensen’s erratic ministrations and his hips lift to meet Jensen’s thrusts, he feels his fellow captive shudder behind him, hips jerking. Jensen moans and then there’s a rush of wetness and it’s over, it’s over.

Jensen pulls away and Jared feels open and sticky. It’s a relief to quickly flip onto his back, to press his legs tightly closed. This feeling of shame and regret isn’t one he’s felt often during sex, and Jared pushes it down and buries it, as best as he can. Jensen has flopped down beside him, lithe body glowing with perspiration, panting slightly, his face sated and happy. Jared reaches out to run a hand down Jensen’s damp cheek.

“That was good,” Jensen murmurs happily and Jared doesn’t agree, but his lover is pleased. It happened and it’s over, and Jared came through the other side no worse for wear. It’s not some magic spell that steals some little, intimate piece of Jared. It’s just sex, plain and simple, perhaps not Jared’s favorite thing, but tolerable.

“Next time,” Jensen croons, smiling, green eyes glowing. “Next time I want to see your face when I come.”

Jared tries to smile back.

Jensen suddenly glances down at Jared’s half-interested dick and flushes a bit sheepishly. “Oh. Want some help with that?”

Jared nods and closes his eyes. He feels Jensen’s mouth, plush and warm, slide around his dick.

He thinks of the garden.

 


	12. Close Up Your Fingers Tight

They’re sitting on the couch, side by side. Cards in hand, a simple game of War this time. Jensen is talking softly and Jared is content to let the words wash over him, as he absent-mindedly drops card after card on the table, only to see them quickly gathered up and swept away. He’s losing again. He always is.

He feels a bit numb, it’s a happy numbness. Jared can’t help wondering if their might be some chemical influence to make him content, something in the air or in the food and water, but perhaps not.

Jensen is here most days. They’re together, two isolated souls against the world, planning for a dream that will never come. It’s the best Jared can hope for. He’s not alone and however long that might last, he’s going to savor it.

Then something Jensen says cuts through Jared’s pleasant haze.

“What if we could go outside though?” Jensen says, playfully. He nods his head over to where Jared’s aloe plant is sitting on the counter, largess from the alien observers, the only green in the room save Jensen’s eyes. “You’ve asked for things and you’ve been given them. Maybe they would let us out? Supervised?”

Jared’s eyes close. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Please don’t do this now.”

“But what if there was a way?” Jensen persists. He’s been mentioning this more and more over the last several weeks. The idea of outside. An outing, not an escape. Until now, Jared has been able to deflect and evade this discussion, to turn away from the idea of it. Taking off his clothes seems to be the most effective deterrent.

He’s running. But he can’t run forever.

Jared looks at him. In this moment he has a choice, and it might be the wrong one. He could steal Jensen’s words away with a kiss; lead him back to the bed and have at least another sweet day of contentment. The suspicion and fear, the nagging voice in his mind, could be silenced. The inevitable pushed back, again and again.

He could do that, but he doesn’t.

Instead Jared presses a hand to Jensen’s sculpted cheek, that beloved face. Then he stands up from the couch, and steps back and away. He watches Jensen frown in confusion.

“Just stop. Stop now. You can just tell me the truth.”

“What are you talking about?” Jensen’s face is all innocent confusion.

“I know you’re one of them,” Jared says patiently. “You can drop the act. _I know_.”

Jared watches the bewildered expression wash away from Jensen’s face. Reality has smashed into their little world, a wave washing away every illusion of happiness. Jensen isn’t going to be able to anchor Jared, not this time.

“How did you know?” Jensen asks. He’s smiling coyly, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It’s not his usual small smile, private and gentle and just for the two of them. It’s wider, meaner.

“You said you’d been alone in captivity for a while, but you didn’t know that the food tasted bland,” Jared said. “The first meal you shared with me was probably the first time you tasted it.”

“Clever, little animal,” Jensen murmurs.

“Also, you weren’t freaked out. I mean, for someone who was abducted and had his memories wiped, you were taking it really well, and every time I talked to you about trying to jog your memory, you didn’t seem interested. So, you probably weren’t missing any memories to begin with. And not having any memories meant that you didn’t have to worry about faking the details of a prior life you never had.”

Jensen smiles wider and, although Jared feels uneasy, he can’t help the words flying out of his mouth, fast and spit-drenched. All his suspicions pressed down and away, weighted to the bottom under Jared’s love and need, now rising to the top like a cork.

Every suspicion, over time, was a hole in the dam of plausible deniability. Now everything is rushing out, everything Jared tried so hard not to know.

“Our accents are the same. Small chance of two survivors from such a similar region. I mean, what are the odds that the last two people on Earth are both from Texas? But you were just copying the way I talk, right?”

“Yup.”

“And that thing you did. Tapping your finger against your cheek. That was you signaling to get out, right? To extract yourself from my habitat with minimum fuss?”

The smile drops off Jensen’s face. “You noticed that?”

“The gas always came after you did it. Not exactly subtle.” Taunting his alien captor is probably a mistake, but Jared feels the urgent need to prove he is not some dumb animal.

“You’re also too beautiful to be human. Too beautiful to be real.”

There are a dozen other things. Ways in which Jensen revealed himself. But none of them really matter. Even without the mounting evidence, Jared thinks that he always knew, maybe as early as that first day. What looked like a reprieve, a blessing, was just more of the same hell. Because Jared let them all die and survived and he deserves it. He knew who and what Jensen is, but he ignored it, buried his head in the sand. Because that’s what Jared does in a crisis.

And the fantasy, the comfort, it was too good to pass up.

“I thought I was quite convincing,” Jensen muses, his face thoughtful.

“You were,” Jared replies, honestly. “It was a very good act.”

“Apparently not good enough.”

“If…If I have questions,” Jared says carefully. “Will you answer them?”

Jensen shrugs. “Why not?”

“Honestly?”

Jensen shrugs again. Jared thinks that perhaps he will be, after all this is his opportunity. He hasn’t had a moment to be honest since the day they met.

“Did you kill us?” Jared demands, bitterly. “Are you responsible for all this death?”

Jensen narrows his eyes. “I liked your previous theory better. That we came upon your dying world and tried to rescue the survivors. That’s a nice story you told yourself. Why don’t we stick with that?”

“Because I don’t want to be lied to,” Jared says patiently.

“Oh yes, you do.” And that only stings Jared so much because it’s true.

“No. Tell me the truth.”

“Yes, we saw your struggling light, about to extinguish,” Jensen says grandly. “We swept in to heal and succor the last hope of humanity.”

“Lies.”

“Fine,” Jensen says. “You’re making it harder on yourself, though. Wouldn’t you rather see me as your savior? I am, you know.”

Jared folds his arms. It’s ridiculous to be posturing in front of his captor, his lover and his tormentor. He has no power. He never did.

“This is what we do,” Jensen says. “My people, we are explorers. Adventurers. Spreading knowledge and civilization, the beauty of our society. As we stretch out, we colonize new worlds. Getting rid of the dominant species is just procedure. Especially a species as technologically advanced as yours. A virus, one designed to eliminate quickly and painlessly.”

“You made us all sick?”

“The virus was almost 100% effective,” Jensen continues dispassionately, as if he’s unaware that he’s describing the event that destroyed Jared’s entire life. “Almost, but not quite. Most humans died swiftly and relatively quietly. But a few survived. _You_ survived.”

“Why?” Jared whispers. “Why me? Why did you pick me?”

Jensen smiles faintly. “Because you’re pretty.”

Jared stares at him.

“There were others. A scant few. We were monitoring them, waiting for them to burn themselves out, through dehydration or starvation, maybe injury. Not a clean death, but an inevitable one. There was some argument as to whether we should expend resources to go through and cull the remaining humans—some of them had burrowed deep into the ground, parasites difficult and dangerous to extract—or just let nature take its course. Some of your weapons are quite brutal, advanced enough to harm us. We’re only flesh and blood after all.”

Jensen reaches out and strokes Jared’s agonized face. Jared lets him, numb and aching, hungry for the touch and ashamed of his own weakness.

“In the end, we decided to take the risk, to eliminate the less threatening survivors. A humane death. I was monitoring my sector when I saw you. So thin and weak. But still quite attractive. Your species looks so much like mine. It was clear you had contracted a mutation of the virus, and that you were dying by inches. We could have just let you. I could have just let you. But something…I saw something, in you. I wanted to have you.”

“What did the others think about what you were doing with me?” Jared asks bitterly. This hurts so badly, it pinches and squeezes his heart.

“I got approval, of course.” Jensen says, sounding offended. “And yes, my father is in command of the invading forces, but that did nothing to sway his decision. The science officers wanted a subject to study; they were largely unwilling to try and capture a more actively dangerous human. I procured you as my personal specimen. Let them do some experiments, as long as you weren’t damaged. No vivisection.”

Jared flinches at the word. He knows it. Videos of dogs, awake, restrained, stomachs cut open, gaping wide and red.

“You slept through most of the minor procedures.”

Jared remembers. The mysterious aches and pains he occasionally woke up with. Lab rat.

“But you weren’t doing well by yourself. Psychologically, I mean. There are a few other humans, claimed by others of my kind. I might have arranged a friend for you, if I’d been so inclined. But your race is so violent. I didn’t want to put one of those pathetic creatures in with you. They might have hurt you.”

Jared laughs bitterly. “You think _we’re_ violent?”

“Violent. Murderous. Destructive. Wasteful. Setting your own little world on fire, with no thought to the consequences. You’ve nearly made this planet uninhabitable. The restoration will take years.”

“You just committed genocide!” Jared screams at him. There is some small satisfaction to be had in seeing Jensen flinch back, his hand fluttering up near his cheek in a panicked movement.

“It was a gentle genocide,” Jensen counters, defiantly putting his hand back down. “Two weeks of mild viral symptoms, then sudden respiratory failure. Our genetic engineers are second to none. There was very little suffering.”

“Damn you,” Jared hisses. He’s back in that emergency room, Adrianne already dead in his arms. She was dead when he came home, already stiff on the couch, fluids seeping into the cushions under her. He had just stepped out to get some groceries, breaking in through the back of the store as he’d done for a week, picking over the meager leavings. And then he had seen them. Dead bodies in the aisles. Dead bodies slumped in the driver’s seats of cars in the parking lot. His heart hammering, as he had ran, ran back home. Too late.

He couldn’t help her. She’d been marked for death from that first sneeze, that first cough.

“I saved you,” Jensen says, stiff with offense. “I could have left you to die. I wanted you. I saved you.”

“Maybe you should have let me die.”

“No. You’re mine. I told you.”

“And you had sex with me,” Jared says helplessly. He remembers how much he gave Jensen, how much he revealed. Precious and private intimacies. Things he had never done and never wanted to do, all of it offered up for a pretty lie. He gave Jensen everything.

“Yes,” Jensen says.

“What did the others think about that?”

“Educational. Amusing. Arousing. Oh, don’t blush, there’s no privacy for such acts among my people. We have watched quite a large assortment of your erotic videos. Your race is quite inventive. But it was truly invigorating to experience it firsthand.”

Jared buries his face in his hands.

“Adorable,” Jensen laughs. “Oh, some of the others wanted to try you, too. But I didn’t want to share. And it’s not the same when the subject is unwilling, although some of the others liked that experience.”

Jared’s not sure he can parse out Jensen’s meaning through the buzzing in his ears. Does he mean that there’s another human in another room like his, being violated? Was it meant to be a comfort that Jensen used manipulation to maneuver Jared into doing things he didn’t find pleasant, instead of using outright force?

“I gave you the truth,” Jensen persists. “I gave you what you wanted.”

The truth is bitter ashes on Jared’s tongue.

There’s silence in the little room. Jared looks at the few offerings, Jensen’s presents. An aloe plant. A deck of cards. The price of Jared’s compliance. Promises and lies.

“What do we do now?” Jared mumbles finally.

“Nothing,” Jensen says mildly. “It was all leading up to this moment anyway. It had to be. I was hoping we could have continued the tale with me in the role of benevolent hero and rescuer, but it was not to be.”

He slaps a thin ring of gleaming metal on the coffee table, the size of a bracelet. It shimmers darkly in front of Jared.

“I want to take you out,” Jensen says, smiling that wide smile. “Take my pet for a walk. These rooms are claustrophobic and I tire of them. They were necessary for a while, but you no longer need them. I’ll take you to my home. I’ll take you everywhere. You’ll see the garden we’re making out of your planet. You just have to wear the bracelet.”

“What does it do?” Jared says. His skin crawls when he looks at it.

“Put it on.”

Jared stares at Jensen.

“Jared,” Jensen says patiently. “I’ve bathed you and fed you. I’ve held you when you’ve cried, and I’ve been inside your body. You’re my pet, and I’m your master. You’ve trusted me to take care of you for a while now. Put it on.”

Jared slowly slips the dark metal on over his hand and up his arm. He feels it tingle on his wrist, cold and refusing to warm to his body temperature.

“ _Guard_ ,” Jensen commands suddenly and Jared feels all his muscles go lax, control of his body slipping away. He slumps limply on the couch, long body heading in a slow slide towards the floor. He topples over like a giant doll.

“You see,” Jensen says, standing over Jared’s loose, defenseless body. “Just a safety precaution. A control mechanism for a violent and lethal animal. We wouldn’t want you to hurt anyone. Our people are too civilized for such actions.”

“Ya…gonna…let…me…go?”

Jensen pauses and smiles. For a long moment, Jared lays there helpless, and he hopes that he only imagines all the terrible things he sees behind Jensen’s eyes, lurking and creeping monstrous behind those pale depths.

“Of course,” Jensen says at last. “ _Release_.” And Jared feels control come back to his trembling limbs.

“So you see,” He continues. “Safe. Your brutal human nature contained. And you can be out with me. The first human pet. Maybe the prototype for more, depending on how you behave. Who knows?”

Jared could cry. He could howl and scream. But he doesn’t want to give Jensen the satisfaction.

“I haven’t locked it on yet,” Jensen says, sliding the bracelet off Jared’s arm and placing it back on the table, a simple loop of metal, benign upon surface inspection. Circle with no beginning or end. “Take some time to think about it. You can always stay here for a while. There’s no real rush.”

Jensen pets Jared’s tangled, brown hair, eyes fond.

“But why would you want to stay here alone? Remember all the things we talked about? Green grass and blue sky? A home for just me and you. Whatever type of home you want. I can give it all to you. I can give you a garden the size of the entire planet. Don’t you still want that?”

Looking at Jensen’s earnest face, it’s easy for Jared to believe he’s still the person Jared loves. That this is an idle conversation, held in the lull after lovemaking. Their heads together on a pillow. Just the two of them against the world and nobody else.

“I’ll be back, we’ll talk.” Jensen laughs and then he raises his finger and taps his cheek. Winks.

The room goes hazy and Jared sinks gratefully into nothingness.


	13. The Watch You From the Apple Bough and Laugh

This is not his room.

This habitat, these three small spaces, are a cage, pure and simple. Jared is an alien experiment, an attractive novelty. He’s a creature that’s caught the attention of a ruthless, extraterrestrial benefactor. Jared is only here and alive because one of his captors has found him alluring.

That Jared has known this all along doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

This is a laboratory enclosure and a zoo exhibit and a prison cell. It is all of these things. Unseen, an alien race studies Jared, amuses themselves with his behavior and reactions, and punishes him with solitary confinement.

The alien that has claimed Jared for his own has murdered his parents, his siblings, his friends, and his lover. These extraterrestrials have exterminated nearly every other person on Earth.

Jensen isn’t his fellow captive. He isn’t a gentle, reticent man who’s lost his memories. He isn’t Jared’s secure anchor, his savior. He isn’t Jared’s willow tree. He isn’t human and he isn’t kind. He is a cruel and calculating killer.

Jared might be killed, too, if and when Jensen gets bored with him. Or if whoever has him after Jensen gets bored with him. How long can his alien stay infatuated? When will Jared be passed on to someone new? When will he be discarded permanently?

Jared has little in the way of options. He’s not in control at all. The aliens will do what they like with him. They have multiple methods they can use to coerce and convince him. They have no qualms about using any of them. Like many peoples, they’re happy to smile and talk about their advanced nature and superior intelligence, all the while killing and raping and torturing. To talk of peace and improvement while slaughtering an entire planet of people.

They were willing to salt and burn the Earth to make their new garden.

This is the truth. No pretty illusion or cover of lies. Jared knows he went pretty far into his own mind to deal with the hand that fate dealt him. His sanity nearly broke trying to survive.

Jared is still Jared. But that’s no longer the only thing he is sure of.

He let himself live in a dream world of attractive lies, knowing all the while that they weren’t true. But he knows why he did it. He was alone and he was desperate, desperate for some small comfort. Some escape from the awful reality of his situation.

Jared is a prisoner of war, a pretty pet collected and displayed, a wartime souvenir.

And if this is a war, a war between Earth and the aliens, then what else is Jared? Collaborator isn’t the right word, but it’s pretty damn close.

Of course, there’s always a choice. Jared made the first one, when he chose to ignore the truth, and play house with Jensen. That avenue of pretend is closed now, but there are always new choices.

Jared can fight. He can resist. He still has some strength and some determination. He knows he won’t get far and he won’t achieve much. He can honor the memories of all he held dear and defy his captors. He’ll be punished and eventually he’ll bend to their will. But he can disobey them for now.

Or Jared can give in. It will certainly be easier. He can put on the bracelet and smile and take Jensen’s arm. He can be the obedient pet that shuffles and smiles while the alien horde chortles and stares. He can spread his legs for his new master, turn his face away from everyone he’s betraying. They’re all dead, anyway.

He can give his alien what he wants.

But to do that, Jared must break. Jared can’t be Jared any more, the only true thing he’s known for a long, long time. Because Jared would never betray the memories of Chad and Adrianne and go knowingly into the arms of their murderer.

Jared would have to believe a lot of lies for that to work. Jared would have to be a lie.

The day stretches out and Jared sits alone in his cage, stiff and silent on the couch. He doesn’t eat and he doesn’t sleep. There are two plates in the refrigerator. He stares at the bracelet Jensen left on the table. A promise in the shape of a ring. A lie without end.

It hurts to admit it, but Jared misses him.

After the light behind the view screen dims to signal evening, Jared retreats to the bedroom and reclines on the bed. It’s the space that feels the most private, in a place where there is no real privacy. He could get up, he could go through his routine. He could call out to Jensen, ask him to appear. More meaningless conversation. Instead he curls up in the bed, curls tight into himself. The smallest ball he can make with his lanky frame.

Sometime later, Adrianne and Chad come and lay down beside him. This is new. They’ve come in his dreams and appeared in his best memories, but this is different.

Jared doesn’t question their presence in this cage. He just snuggles down between them, Adrianne on the right and Chad on the left, the way they used to watch movies together.

“I wanted to be with you guys,” Chad says suddenly. He’s tucked himself into Jared’s side, no concept of personal space, as close to Jared’s skin as Adrianne is on the right. “I wanted you.”

“I put a stop to it,” Adrianne replies gravely. “Told him in no uncertain terms, that I wouldn’t share. And he would have lost your friendship, too.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jared says.

“You did,” Adrianne replies, drawing up on one elbow. Her lips curve in a sweet smile. “You know everything we know, because we’re you. You knew about Chad.”

“I’m sorry,” Jared says automatically.

“You should stop apologizing, bro,” Chad laughs. “None of this is your fault.”

“Yes it is,” Jared whispers. “I should have…I should have…”

“What? Stopped an alien race? Stopped the super flu? Are you some sort of secret superhero?”

“Stopped Jensen,” Jared says stubbornly. “It was the one thing I could have done. I could have stopped him.”

“Jared, you needed someone,” Adrianne asserts. “Being alone was killing you. You didn’t betray us by surviving the best way you could. You need to forgive yourself.”

“But I let him—“

“Chad, go away for a while,” Adrianne says and the warmth on Jared’s left vanishes, as if it had never been there at all. Adrianne reaches out, hand soft and warm, and strokes a gentle line down Jared’s cheek. “You didn’t do anything wrong, baby. You didn’t. And he didn’t take anything away from you.”

“I should have—“

“Jared, do you know why I stopped pressuring you about sex? About the sex you didn’t want? It wasn’t because I wasn’t going to eventually get my way. You would have done it, if I’d fought hard enough for it. If I’d pushed, I could have had it.”

Jared flushes. “I wouldn’t have refused you anything. I love you.”

“That’s generous, baby. And that’s dangerous, too. You’re the kind of person who gives and gives. The wrong person will take advantage of that. I stopped asking because I needed to respect your boundaries, in order to respect myself. To be the person worthy of your love. Jensen isn’t like that. But he didn’t take away anything about who you are, when he did that. He’s the one who lost something. You’ll never see him in the same light, not after he betrayed your trust.”

“I love him,” Jared whispers miserably. It’s true. The picture of who Jensen truly is has never been clearer in Jared’s mind: alien conqueror, spoiled and selfish, petty and cruel. But it’s forever tied to the image of who Jared let himself believe Jensen was: a lost soul, caring and gruff, the only other survivor. Jared’s lover. Jared’s friend. All those feelings remain, even when the veil of deception has been lifted.

Jared still wants a garden of citrus trees and roses.

“You can’t help it, man,” Chad says, dropping back down at Jared’s side. “That’s just who you are. Big heart.”

“What do I do?” Jared begs.

“What can you do?” Adrianne asks patiently. “You know there’s nothing you can do, right?”

“Give in?” Jared rasps angrily, wiping at his wet eyes. “Sell out?”

“Forgive,” Adrianne says. “Forgive yourself. You don’t have control. You never did.”

“We’ll be here,” Chad says. “We’ll always be here. He can’t ever take that away from you. You do what you need to do. Survive. Survive for us.”

“Stay,” Jared begs. “Stay.”

“For as long as you need,” Adrianne whispers. Then they both are smoothing the sweaty hair from his brow, two different hands, two different touches. It’s been so long since Jared has felt them.

Jared closes his eyes.

He drifts off to sleep, and when he wakes there is only one side of his body is warm, only one side has another body pressed close and comforting.

Jared opens his eyes. He sees Jensen’s face and smiles, before it all comes back to him. Then he recoils, stiff and uncomfortable. It’s difficult. His body has been conditioned to move closer, not to keep distance.

“Hey,” Jensen says.

“Do they know you’re here?” Jared asks, and then curses his idiocy. Already, his mind is crafting another lie, another protective layer of illusion. He still wants it to be Jared and Jensen against the world, against the alien horde.

“They’re always watching,” Jensen replies evenly.

“What do you want?” Jared asks.

“To talk.”

“We can go sit on the couch for that,” Jared says, starting to rise. This position is too intimate. Too painful.

“No.” Jensen reaches out, and Jared allows himself to be pulled back down. “This was always my favorite. You and me, in bed, looking at each other.”

“It’s too late for that,” Jared answers. Jensen’s hand is still on his arm, warm and heavy. It feels good.

Jensen frowns. “Nothing is going to change.”

“Everything has changed!” Jared hisses. He doesn’t know why he’s whispering. He could shout, scream. Try to break the walls with the agony of his cries.

It’s not like anyone cares.

“Nothing important is going to change,” Jensen amends infuriatingly. But in the dim lighting, his face doesn’t seem smugly superior, cruel. He seems more like his old self.

Jared shakes himself. Jensen never had an ‘old self.’ It was a lie, always a lie. Jared needs to remember this. He needs to remember that the softer, quieter Jensen is the one that’s been the most dishonest with him.

“You’re going to see more, go more places,” Jensen continues. “But I’ll always be at your side. I’ll always be with you. You won’t be alone.”

“What if I don’t _want_ to be with you?” Jared growls, shoving away from Jensen.

“You’d prefer someone else?” Jensen asks, lifting an eyebrow. “That can be arranged.”

Jared is pressed in close before he can even think, his big hands fisting the material of Jensen’s t-shirt in anxious, frightened need. “Please, no!”

Whimpering a bit, Jared burrows his face into Jensen’s chest, lets his captor stroke Jared’s back in soothing circles. His anchor.

It’s a lie. It’s a lie.

Jared has never been so weak.

“I won’t let anyone take you,” Jensen murmurs, pulling Jared in close. “But you need to listen to me. You need to behave. Everything depends on that.”

“Why?” Jared retorts bitterly. “You can just make me do it, right?”

Jensen chuckles. “True. But it looks a bit better, you understand, if you appear willing. I do have our scientific and military elite to impress.”

A dancing monkey. A compliant and exotic pet. Jared’s not sure he can be that.

“You hurt me,” Jared whispers, the words slipping out almost unbidden. A stupid thing to say. Jensen knows that he’s hurt Jared. He isn’t going to care.

“Everything has been for your benefit,” Jensen answers, and his tone is a bit wounded. “Keeping you healthy and fed, preventing you from hurting yourself. We took great pains to provide you comfort. Everything was always for you.”

It takes a moment for Jared to understand that he and Jensen are not on the same page. Jensen seems to be talking about food and shelter, the habitat created for Jared, the lie of a companion. All the tricks and illusions that kept Jared alive all this time.

But Jared is thinking about all those tender moments. The heart he gave away, even when he had strong suspicions that the man he loved wasn’t who he said he was. Love. It may be that Jensen just can’t feel it the way a human can.

Or it may be that their every moment together, the highlight of Jared’s days, was just a short interlude for Jensen. He left the habitat afterwards and went about his own life, a life filled with colleagues, friends and family. He had his own reality, far removed from Jared’s suffering.

Jensen has come to mean everything for Jared. The only connection. Love and light and everything real and good.

For Jensen, spending time with Jared might just have been an amusing aspect of his job.

Love. Neither of them had said the word. Jared could feel it, his heart had ached with it. Love in every thumping heartbeat. But he never said it aloud.

He’s not sure whether he regrets that or not.

“Here’s what I’d like to see,” Jensen continues. “You ready to leave with me, ready to follow my every command. Calm and obedient. When we’re alone,” Jensen’s lush mouth quirks a bit at that, “You can fall apart. I’ll take care of you, hold you. But when you’re on display, I expect you to behave.”

There’s nothing to say, so Jared stays quiet. Shouting, screaming, fighting: none of it will work. And the grief, the loss, is staggering. It’s not enough that Jared has had to lose his entire human life, his freedom. He’s had to lose Jensen as well. He tucks himself in closer to Jensen, listens to his heart beat. Jensen’s t-shirt soaks up the majority of Jared’s tears.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it,” Jensen says, but he doesn’t move to leave. If anything, he gathers Jared closer. “A week or two. Sleep now. I’ll be gone when you wake.”

It takes a while, but the muscle memory is too keen. Warm and held and feeling stupidly safe, wrapped up in the lie was so sweet he had to believe it, Jared finally succumbs.


	14. Hold Him Fast

It is morning, perhaps, in the habitat and Jared is exercising. His breakfast plate of food is getting cold, however Jared feels better doing his workout on an empty stomach. After he’s worn himself out and eaten, he’ll take a long shower and soothe his sore muscles.

Waiting is the worst part of all this, but Jared has learned to be patient.

Shower now. Wash away the sour scent of his physical exertions, the stink of fear and stress and grief. Wash it all away and start over.

There’s nothing else to do.

Jensen finally re-appears in the cage as Jared emerges from the bathroom in his Wal-Mart clothes, gray sweat material clinging a bit to his still damp shoulders. Jared stares.

Jensen isn’t wearing his human disguise of t-shirt and jeans, alluring bare feet and soft, smiling eyes. His clothing is alien, dark green, both crisp yet somehow draping, medallions and pins studding the fabric. It’s clothing with a military feel. Conqueror. Warrior.

Jared freezes at the sight of him. He wants to run to him. Hold him. Punch him. Scream. Cry. He has everything and nothing, all in one hatefully beloved package.

“Hi,” Jensen says and it sounds shy somehow. It sounds the way that Jensen doesn’t deserve to sound.

“Hi.”

“Are you ready?”

Always. Never. Of course and of course not. But there are no choices. There never were.

Jared slowly nods his head.

Jensen smiles wider, a bit of tension relaxing in his shoulders. Apparently, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that Jared would comply. Jared’s not sure what his alien was expecting. Perhaps a full on prison riot at the scale of one prisoner, with Jared screaming and kicking, having to be subdued by force.

No. If Jared is leaving his cage, the confinement of one metal bracelet is considerably better than being wreathed with chains.

“I brought you some clothes,” Jensen says and Jared looks at the pile of silky material under Jensen’s arm, nearly indistinguishable from the fabric gracing Jensen’s form. Jared takes the pile of cloth a bit numbly.

“Put it on,” Jensen says, wrinkling his nose a bit at Jared’s rather pedestrian sweat suit. He’d never said a word about it before. Jared wonders whose idea it was to let him keep his familiar rags. Was it some lofty scientist, pontificating on the idea of Jared needing to be eased into his slavery?

Jared turns to head for the bathroom, only to be arrested by a hand on his arm.

“Right here,” Jensen insists, smile a little wider. Is it meanness or desperation, Jared ponder, is Jensen needing to please some unknowing requirements of a faceless observer or indulging in his own sadism? Or is that Jared’s mind once again playing tricks, trying to put a positive ‘Pollyanna[i]’ spin on the darkest of situations?

“I thought…” Jared trails off. Privacy. A moment to breathe. He’s waited long hours for Jensen, for this moment. He’s made his decision, but suddenly he needs more time.

“None of the rooms are any more private than any other,” Jensen says indulgently. “They can all see you. They’ve all seen you. Every inch. Everything. Put it on.”

Stiffly, Jared strips down to nothing and slides into the unfamiliar garments as quick as possible, face reddened.

The clothing is silky. A shade more grey than green, compared to Jensen’s clothes. A little snug, the fabric revealing more than Jared’s sweats ever did.

Jensen laughs a bit. “I thought you would take your time. You used to like this so much, remember?”

Jared meets Jensen’s eyes, and Jensen looks away first.

His alien captor strides to the table, lifting up the bracelet. Jared’s spent hours staring at it. Thinking or trying not to think.

“Put it on.” Again, that challenge in Jensen’s tone. Something to prove. But to who?

Jared slides the bracelet over his trembling wrist. He lets Jensen lock it in place.

“There,” Jensen sighs. His eyes drift over Jared’s form and there’s approval and heat in those green eyes. It seems he likes the way Jared looks, now branded as Jensen’s from head to toe. “Shall we go?”

He turns on his heel towards the large view screen of Jared’s cage. Jared watches the screen shimmer and then slide to the side, like curtains revealing a stage. The exit existing all this time, right under Jared’s nose. Jared obediently steps up behind his master, one pace back and slightly to the left without even being told. He’s embarrassed and frightened and angry and he doesn’t know if he can do this.

On either side of him, Chad and Adrianne grasp his hands and he sighs a bit, grateful for their presence, their support.

“Let’s go find our garden,” Jensen says and Jared moves to follow silently behind his captor.

Jensen pauses. He turns to Jared and smiles. His smaller smile. The smile that was just for the two of them alone. The smile that always seemed to mean love and trust and peace. Jared’s chest aches at the sight of it. He wants to trust in that smile, even though he knows better. He wants to believe that Jensen will keep him safe.

“I’m glad I found you. I’m glad I saved you.”

Jared's not sure that he agrees.

"I'm going to take care of you.  I promise."

Jared smiles back. He closes his eyes for a moment, just a moment, and lets himself believe.

 

[i] “Pollyanna” is a Disney movie starring Hayley Mills as a plucky orphan who annoyingly insists everyone around her play “The Glad Game”; a game where they put a positive spin on something unpleasant that has happened to them. In the film the tables are turned when something horrific happens to Pollyanna and everyone insists she try to find the silver lining in her great tragedy. I’d like to think Disney was being ironic, but probably not.

**Author's Note:**

> A quick note about tagging.
> 
> This work is probably under-tagged. I prefer a minimalist approach. I have a love/hate relationship with tags. I love how they can help people find topics they're looking for and avoid ones they don't. I hate how they can completely ruin a story's unfolding when they spoil the plot of the story for the reader.  
> I tried to tag for anything that might be sensitive while not revealing too much, while realizing that it is kind of impossible to tag accurately for this story when the POV as written is completely unreliable. Anyone who reads my work by now should realize that consent and discussions of consent appear in all my works. If there is a tag you absolutely feel MUST be attached to the story feel free to leave me a comment about it, and I'll consider adding it.
> 
> Thank you.  
> Thank you.


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